Advertisement
Infrastructure investment and economic development strategies in Shanghai and Rio de Janeiro
28 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
Gordon Tullock on the motives for income distribution
01 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, constitutional political economy, Gordon Tullock, income redistribution, Public Choice Tags: Gordon Tullock, income redistribution
Robert Lucas on the role of income redistribution in economic development
30 May 2014 Leave a comment
in development economics, growth miracles, Robert E. Lucas Tags: income redistribution, The Great Escape, The Great Fact
|
Of the tendencies that are harmful to sound economics, the most seductive, and in my opinion the most poisonous, is to focus on questions of distribution.
In this very minute, a child is being born to an American family and another child, equally valued by God, is being born to a family in India. The resources of all kinds that will be at the disposal of this new American will be on the order of 15 times the resources available to his Indian brother. This seems to us a terrible wrong, justifying direct corrective action, and perhaps some actions of this kind can and should be taken. But of the vast increase in the well-being of hundreds of millions of people that has occurred in the 200-year course of the industrial revolution to date, virtually none of it can be attributed to the direct redistribution of resources from rich to poor. The potential for improving the lives of poor people by finding different ways of distributing current production is nothing compared to the apparently limitless potential of increasing production. |
via The Industrial Revolution: Past and Future 2003 Annual Report Essay by Robert E. Lucas, Jr
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments