1. Economic Growth: why are we incomparably wealthier today than our great-great-great-great-great-greatgrandparents in the 18th century?
'enclosures' affected only a small proportion of the population, primarily in parts of the south and east Midlands. Workers in the new factories and mills of northern England were not dispossessed agricultural labourers; they were primarily recruited from local families who had long been involved in some form of manufacturing.The other standard response is “imperialism”; capitalists expanded their markets, ruthlessly and violently stole resources from other poor nations. Our wellbeing was paid for by the blood of (mainly black) tribes far-far away. Such zero-sum –game thinking was pretty accurate until Malthus, who, still believing it, wrote his infamous essay on population in 1798. Coincidentally, from that time on it ceased to be true. And besides, the lands of current Zimbabwe or Algeria didn’t have steam engines or medical innovations or trains or computers that western imperialists simply stole from them.
The most sensible leftie response is “well, capitalism served us very well in the beginning”, which is actually more in line with Marx’s own writing. But somehow everything is different now; capitalism changed somewhere along the route (prime suspect: the Neoliberal Agenda) and something else will take us to the next level of humanity.
Such response amounts to admitting defeat and choosing to fight another day; great! Capitalism made us wealthy, I’m glad we have that established. Next fight: the unconvincing idea that since 1931 or 1973 or 2008 it isn’t any longer – and we should adopt anti-capitalism and interventionist policies instead. That story is a much bigger question which the lefties still lose, but such responses are at least academically and historically honest enough to admit their initial defeat.
2. Why is redistribution of income from high-income-earners to low-income-earners justifiable only within a country and not across countries?
"what is the reason that it’s alright for us to help ourselves to the things of the 1% - or, what is the same thing – demand that they ‘pay their fair share’ when at the same time we deny the ability of people elsewhere in the world to come up to us and say ‘you should give us our fair share of your things’? Why do we admit the one but deny the other?”Or, as he mocks some trivial objections to that question on the wonderful ContraKrugman podcast:
"’That’s completely different, man! Completely different’; Yes, you’re right! Now they’re taking your money, that’s what’s different!”If you accept income redistribution on national levels, you necessarily have to accept it on international levels too (or give me a morally sound and consistent reason for why all your indignant arguments only apply to Britons, or French or Americans) – at which point you are the top 1-2-3% (seeing as how most of the top 20% of income earners worldwide encompass the entire Western world), and at which point income redistribution is too much to stomach, even for the left.
These questions probably don’t convince anybody, but my hope is that they force lefties to admit something they really don’t want to admit; markets work, they enrich us all and they make our lives better in every sense of the word. That’s a very useful step on the way.
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