If you mean “by increasing economic activity, since poor people have lower rates of saving, thus creating more wealth,” then… no, wait, the redistribution is still pretty much what matters.
This appears to be a complete non sequitur. But, yes I do mean “increase the amount of wealth being produced”. Which as mwengler points out people have less motivation to create wealth if its going to be redistributed away.
The question is then, do you have anything in mind when you refer to things that are better than, say, a public education system at providing poor people new opportunities?
Well, here in the US the public education system pretty much sucks.
If you mean “by increasing economic activity, since poor people have lower rates of saving, thus creating more wealth,”
This appears to be a complete non sequitur.
What I mean is the typical capitalist statement “voluntary transactions create wealth.” Since both sides are happier than they were (well, most of the time, this is reality after all), they’ve both gained wealth. This gets called “creating” wealth, even though that’s a bit silly :) So if you want to make people happier, one way is to look for high-gain voluntary transactions, and make them happen more often. Thus my claim that increasing economic activity will (ceteris paribus) create wealth.
This obviously isn’t always applicable—sometimes investing the money (what would otherwise happen) is just fine, wealth-creation-wise. But if poor people, and the economies that poor people are part of, have high-gain voluntary transactions available to them that they aren’t using yet because of lack of money in the system, there’s opportunity.
This appears to be a complete non sequitur. But, yes I do mean “increase the amount of wealth being produced”. Which as mwengler points out people have less motivation to create wealth if its going to be redistributed away.
Well, here in the US the public education system pretty much sucks.
What I mean is the typical capitalist statement “voluntary transactions create wealth.” Since both sides are happier than they were (well, most of the time, this is reality after all), they’ve both gained wealth. This gets called “creating” wealth, even though that’s a bit silly :) So if you want to make people happier, one way is to look for high-gain voluntary transactions, and make them happen more often. Thus my claim that increasing economic activity will (ceteris paribus) create wealth.
This obviously isn’t always applicable—sometimes investing the money (what would otherwise happen) is just fine, wealth-creation-wise. But if poor people, and the economies that poor people are part of, have high-gain voluntary transactions available to them that they aren’t using yet because of lack of money in the system, there’s opportunity.