… is from pages 333-334 of the 1990 Transaction Publishers reprint of W.H. Hutt‘s important 1936 book, Economists and the Public:
Apparent success in redistribution through taxation may be due to a failure to take into account the possibility of gain to the present poor being counterbalanced by a loss to the future poor.
DBx: To ‘redistribute’ wealth is just that: to ‘redistribute‘ wealth. To ‘redistribute’ wealth is not to create wealth. And because forced ‘redistribution’ – especially ‘redistribution’ which is carried out merely because statistics show patterns of ‘distribution’ that offend certain people’s sensibilities – quite plausibly unleashes a flurry of disincentives to produce new wealth, any observed current ‘successes’ attributed to ‘redistribution’ must be reckoned against the much-more-difficult-to-discern future ill-consequences of this ‘redistribution.’
