Re:CEO compensation has grown 940% since 1978
by doubleunplussed on Thursday August 15, 2019 @02:21PM
(#20708084)
It's very frustrating that less distortionary, plain old redistribution is so much less politically palatable than corporate welfare and random subsidies and taxes. I want a wealth tax funding a UBI, tuned to whatever level is necessary to stop inequality from growing, and for markets to do the rest. (There are market failures that benefit from government intervention too, but I'm just talking about the plan to address inequality, which has no reason to pick on specific industries or practices)
Let's take the human element out of it. Do diamond "deserve" to be a million times more expensive than water? Water's essential for life, whereas diamonds are just decorations. Yet what would happen if we mandated that water must be priced higher than diamonds? It would wreak havoc.
At the end of the day, markets are a social technology. The only one that humans have for effective large-scale coordination of economic activity. It would be great if there was a functional alternative system, but it simply doesn't exist.
The enormous increases in material living standards that humanity has experienced over the past 200 years is only possible because we let markets determine supply and demand. (With a caveat for trained economists to design targeted interventions concerning well-studied and classified examples of market failures.)
If you're concerned about inequality, the correct way to deal with it is with a robust welfare state and economist-designed redistribution schemes. Let markets decide price, and balance supply and demand. Then fix it on the backend with a welfare state. Don't mess with the machinery that literally feeds us.