Allan H. Meltzer lays the redistributionist argument and public policies bare in this piece from July 2015.

Among other things, he writes about claims "that "fairness" of higher tax rates for the highest earners to finance bigger transfers to the poorest. That's wrong on two counts." he tells us.

1. "First, since the “war on poverty” began 50 years ago, many billions of dollars have been redistributed from taxpayers to those who receive transfers. Meanwhile, there has been no evidence of reduced poverty rates. Nor has there been evidence that people now believe the system is fairer. “Fair” is a subjective notion based on a term that cannot be defined objectively."
2. "…we are currently experiencing the adverse effects of government policies that reduced productivity and ignored its costs. Instead of helping people get better jobs, regulation raises business costs and discourages expansion. A massive increase in the regulation of industry discourages business investment."

He tells us more:

"Americans did not become wealthy by redistributing income. They became wealthy by innovating, learning, and working hard. Most of the immigrants that came were unskilled. So, too, were the workers who came from the farms to industry. They began at the bottom, learned by doing on-the-job training, and earned higher wages. This model seems to be breaking down in our current economic climate."

"Politicians can promise to narrow the income gap. They can pass legislation that redistributes more. But they cannot permanently reduce the spread between the top and the rest unless they adopt policies that encourage growth, innovation, learning, and productivity. There is no other way."

Hear! Hear! Expecting to create wealth by destroying entrepreneurship hasn't seemed to work throughout history and no evidence has been presented to make me think more of these policies will help the very people the political elite claim to want to help.

Read Meltzer's complete article here…

As an aside, he mentions Alexis de Tocqueville’s book on our republic’s early years, Democracy in America in his opening paragraph which reminded me of the excellent speech by Lawrence Reed of FEE.org below.

Hope you enjoy it too.