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Concern over rich-poor divide seen on the increase during pandemic

9 Comments
By Matthew Lavietes

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9 Comments
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Easy solutions: higher income taxes on the wealthy, higher corporation taxes, and wealth taxes.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

This is inevitably the case. More so, when the rich are getting richer, and the poor are facing more unemployment (notably the younger group) worldwide during the pandemic.

What else to expect from an incredibly unfair and fast rotting world !

2 ( +2 / -0 )

To quote Adam Smith, one of the founding intellects who descreibed and advocated the benefits of competitive markets:

“they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.”

Smith also wrote:

"No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.”

4 ( +4 / -0 )

Adam Smith also wrote:

"Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.”

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Easy solutions: higher income taxes on the wealthy, higher corporation taxes, and wealth taxes.

Adam Smith would disagree:

 “Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.”

Smith Also wrote:

The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state. The expense of government to the individuals of a great nation is like the expense of management to the joint tenants of a great estate, who are all obliged to contribute in proportion to their respective interests in the estate. In the observation or neglect of this maxim consists what is called the equality or inequality of taxation."

"“The high price of necessities for the poor must be compensated by an increase in their wages.. It must always be remembered, that it is the luxurious and not the necessary expence of the lower class that should be taxed.”

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Adam Smith would disagree

Adam Smith is wrong.

-2 ( +0 / -2 )

I beg pardon: "would be" wrong.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

I beg pardon: "would be" wrong.

So what pray tell are your economic bona fides to challenge his writings? What peer reviewed research justifies your claims and invalidates his? Be very clear on what qualifies you to make such a bold statement. I have a BA and MA in economics with an emphasis on development economics and the effects of multilateral trade on development. I work as a cost analyst where I use statistics and big data bases daily. My work has to survive murder boards, I mean peer reviews, before submission as one of our products. How about you?

1 ( +1 / -0 )

I'm someone who has read work by economists who were born after 1723.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

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