Talk:Redistribution

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This page is BADLY in need of a complete overhaul, to achieve NPOV. It is a completely slanted propoganda piece. It goes on for many paragraphs about how great and necessary redistribution is, but only gives a few sentances to an opposing point of view. The "importance" of redistribution is an OPINION, not a fact. And certainly not NPOV. And the "finite" resources comment shows a serious lack of knowledge of how a capitalist economy actually works. It is a common mistake made by the far-left.

This page is no where close to NPOV.

I agree. This is hugely POV and looks more like an entry out of 'SocialistWiki' than Wikipedia. --195.137.69.156 17:29, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

Responding to the above user, I would have to say that to think any resource is infinite is to be grossly mistaken and that itself is a "serious lack of knowledge of how [any] economy actually works." It was also never said what this was a "propoganda piece" for, nor how to fix it. Please explain yourself in further detail and give more ideas about how to fix this "error" you have "identified." Or just fix it yourself. --Ein2015 12:06, 23 November 2005

I'd agree that the page is in need of overhaul, as it is one-sided, to say the least, although the side on redistribution is fairly well written, but there's no need for the perjorative comments on the original user. - Chris 29/11/05

One of the big problems with the page is the model itself, which the entry claims " can be argued that it models power distributions in human societies tolerably well" The model is completely bogus, as it ignores the central tenet of capitalism that both parties are enriched by the economic transaction between them, when the transactions are voluntary. The view of the model, that all transactions are zero-sum games where one party wins and another loses (indeed losing *everything* in a single transaction) is incredibly naive. You can argue with how voluntary certain transactions are in capitalist environments, but to ignore the central concept of it is silly. -- Tim 05/12/05

Further to this, although I haven't examined and analyzed what's in the main article much yet, is the notion that democracy must necessarily mean representative districts based on population strata. I've just been puttering around the Gerrymandering, Redistricting and Representation (politics) pages and put in my two bits worth there about the onetime necessity of the vast and underpopulated ridings once common - and needed - in Canada. I've been doing historical election districts and, believe me, it's staggering how few voters the northern and mountain ridings might have relative to the urban/suburban norms. General gist is that the ideals of representation by population have meaning in urban areas, but are difficult to apply across vast distances and rude weather and harsh terrain that typified the rural ridings until recent years (large town growth in some areas has changed things a bit, though the vast emptinesses remain beyond their mini-"urban" cores). What I saw on the main article looked to me like a lot of mumbojumbo but I'll wade through the verbiage and see if it makes any sense; if I've got anything to add or to tear apart, I'll do it here.Skookum1 08:20, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

While not accurate in what it attempts to describe, I quite like the idea of that game. Something to note: Mostlikely, even if every single person started out the same, it's very likely that the game will eventually end up as a single person owning everything. For example, 1000 people with 1 coin each. At least one person is going to challenge, which will result in at least one player with 2 coins. They will challenge a player with only a single coin, and of that, someone is going to result with 3 coins, forcing everyone to keep playing in order to have any chance at all. But note that this game hardly makes much of an argument for redistribution anyway. Based on this, any redistribution would quickly result back in a single player controlling everything again. -Nichlemn 04:41, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Neutrality and Verify

NPOV and verify tags added.

Inheritance taxes: Since large inheritances come not by merit and represent an affront to distributive justice, most societies tax them substantially. However, it is becoming an increasingly political issue whether wealth that has already been taxed as it was earned should be taxed again upon the owner's death. That is why only particularly large inheritances are usually taxed. For example, in the U.S., inheritances were taxed 50% over $1.2 million until 2001. An opponent of the American inheritance tax is George W. Bush, who temporarily repealed it. By renaming the estate tax the "death tax", American conservatives were able to galvanize the population against the tax during the 2000 U.S. Presidential election, despite the fact that over 99% of Americans are not wealthy enough for the tax to be an issue.

This seems to be selling a point of view, also it isn't sourced. - FrancisTyers 01:06, 15 February 2006 (UTC)