RE: Welfare and scientific ethics

[Michael Harrington <mharrington@milken-inst.org>]

I was about to write a reply on this issue of redistribution and welfare
policies but David beat me to it. I wholly concur with his statement below.
Michael 




-----Original Message-----
From: David Spitzley [mailto:dspitzle@gw.wash.k12.mi.us]
Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 1999 11:28 AM
To: ownership@cog.kent.edu
Subject: Re: Welfare and scientific ethics


IPGmail@aol.com wrote:
I don't want to flog the issue of redistribution to death, but if 
economists' distaste for it is a significant problem in advancing proposals 
to broaden capital ownership, I think we need not only to ask whether 
proposals are redistributive, but whether this distaste for redistribution
is 
well-grounded.

----------------------------------------

Well, drawing upon Kelso's arguments (since they were the first coherent
argument that I had seen), redistribution is undesirable given other
alternatives for the basic reason that it represents a concentration of
economic power in the hands of the state, which is on all fours with
concentration of economic power in the hands of individuals, compounded by
the state's monopoly on force.  Thus, any mechanism which can help broaden
capital ownership without recourse to redistribution is preferable to one
which accomplishes the same thing through redistribution.

However, Kelso himself acknowledged that given the extensive dependence of
the industrialized world on redistribution, it would be logical to tackle to
problem of turning redistributive policies which concentrate ownership into
redistributive policies which broaden ownership as a transitional step to a
fully democratic economy.

In my mind, the most important consideration in evaluating any
redistributive programs, new or proposed, from a Kelsonian perspective are
a) is the policy required in order to maintain a stable society today, and
b) does it act to reduce the long-term necessity of redistributive policies.
Thus, policies such as corporate welfare would probably be considered
wasteful and unjust given that the answer to both questions would probably
be a resounding No;  income stabilization programs, whether farm subsidies
or AFDC would probably be considered at best a necessary evil for the time
being, with an answer of Yes to a)  but a No to b); and existing tax
policies which encourage the expansion of ESOPs, even when they do result in
share dilution, and even when they do absorb significant tax revenues,
should probably be considered flawed but acceptable until better policy
windows arise, given that both a) and b) could be answered Yes.  While
purely Kelsonian policies for promoting democ!
!
ratic ownership patterns are to be strongly prefered, it would be foolish to
think that no other methods are justifiable for achieving that end given the
current state of economic policy.