Monday, January 07, 2013

The idea of fairness in a world in which wealth itself is relative?

When one speaks of a concept it is important that it is properly qualified so as to be correctly understood. Failure to accomplish that makes impossible for either the problem to be identified or a desired solution to be found. Perhaps this is why politicians have a tendency to speak of ill-defined and oft muddled concepts, like “social justice,” “a living wage” or “fair share.” These concepts are impossible to define in a way consistent with how they are represented, since their proponents represent them as definite, rather than abstract matters. In our time the demand for “the rich” to pay their “fair share” through higher taxes has become a standard war cry broadcast from every public and crony source of media. Yet, there is no objective means of defining either what constitutes “the rich” or “fair share.” Politicians and demagogues alike may debate these issues for as long or as short as they may desire, but whatever level they agree on is sure to be arbitrary, save for the only objective conclusion that such concepts are impossible to quantify.
Given a communistic ownership of schools, roads, streets, parks, healthcare institutions, libraries, schools and universities, how is one to be able to calculate each person’s use - “fair share” - of each? What share of a road belongs to a particular taxpayer? What usage is “fair share”? How many books in any given library belong to a specific person and which specific books? Who owns the walls and who owns the library’s carpets? Does the person paying more in taxes own more of the roads, libraries or schools than the person who pays less? What of the person who pays no tax at all? What of the person who desires to use his claim on a gymnasium, and of nothing else? Does the state university graduate owe a particular service to the taxpayer that subsidized or paid for the operation of the university? A typical example of who “fair share” proponents see the world is given to us by US Sen. Elizabeth Warren...   (Read more, from: Zerohedge)

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