Here is a graph to illustrate previously mentioned statement from Margaret Thatcher that socialists
would rather the poor were poorer provided the rich were less rich.
Check this out:
That chart is used with permission from Dave Poling.
Since a picture is worth a thousand words, the graph stands on its own. So here are 400 words to explain the one picture.
In capitalism, the rich get richer, the middle class gets richer, and the poor get richer. Sounds like a good plan to me.
In socialism, the rich get poorer, the middle gets poorer, and the poor get poorer. Please explain why that is considered moral.
Inequality in capitalism
Let’s look at the left side of the graph.
The time line for which this happens is a generation or two.
You noticed the gap between rich and middle grew, as well as the gap between middle and poor. The inequality between rich and poor grew tremendously. Yet, look at the graph again.
In that time, everyone gets a lots better off.
Today, the life I live in the middle of the middle class is something the very well off would have envied when my dad was born. My life today is far better than the filthy rich 100 years ago.
Don’t believe me? Check out my long series of posts on how much life has improved over the last 100 years. You can find them combined into one page: Improvements in our standard of living and “The Price of Everything’.
Look at where the poor end up at the end of the graph. They are close to the level the middle was a generation or two earlier.
Look at how much the middle improves. At the end of the graph they are at the level the rich were at the start.
If the poor and middle improve their lives that much, what difference does it make that the really rich became really, really rich?
If you can set aside greed and envy, you would be quite happy that the poor and middle are so much better off. The middle and poor, which make up the vast majority of the population, have improved their lives tremendously.
Equality in socialism
Check out the right side of the graph:
The poor fall deeper into poverty.
The middle falls as well.
Even the rich, after riding out the hits from socialism for a while, drop faster.
By the time a generation of time or perhaps two passes by, everyone is worse off than when they started.
Where is the morality in that?
Yet, it illustrates in relation, if not to scale, the goal of socialism as described by Lady Thatcher in the video:
All levels of income are better off than they were in 1979. But what the honorable member is saying is that he would rather the poor were poorer provided the rich were less rich. That way you will never create the wealth for better social services as we have. And what a policy. Yes. He would rather have the poor poorer provided the rich were less rich. That is the Liberal (British Socialists) policy. Yes it came out. He didn’t intend it to but it did.
Please explain to me why socialism is considered to be a moral system by people who claim to care about the poor..
The above graphs are expanded in part 2.
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