Don Boudreaux of Cafe Hayek points out that generally, influence on policy is not distributed equitably, and specifically that Paul Krugman is a one-percenter in the distribution of influence. Thus, if some are worried about redistributing income and wealth from the top 1%, why not redistribute influence from the top 1% too?
This is really a rather amazing way of looking at things, because we clearly have groups whose influence is out of proportion to their numbers; farmers, for one; ivy league college graduates for another; bankers for a third.
Further, the fact that so many people are interested in redistributing income or wealth, and so few are interested in redistributing influence, really makes me think that all of the redistributive arguments are really driven by the fact that cash is fungible and easy to transfer.
One way to dissuade a pretty young woman of the merits of redistribution is to point out that the sexual attentions of pretty young women are most unequally distributed. Thus the government is going to step in to make sure that they are more equally so.
And there's an awful lot of old and ugly men out there who would vote for this so be careful about using the "democratically decided things are good" argument too.
Posted by: Tim Worstall | January 17, 2012 at 06:40 AM