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<blockquote data-quote="Caveman" data-source="post: 420738" data-attributes="member: 4026">@iknowexactly, my premise is not wrong.The welfare state redistributes wealth from the productive to the unproductive, and unproductive are both the ruling elite and the poorest layers of society.Historically the rich (kings, sultans, etc) took all for themselves and their cronies and maybe threw a few peanuts to the poorest.But today when we realize that it's not right to take from the workers and give to the king so he can build a bigger and more opulent palace, the rulers need a better excuse for extorting wealth from the productive workers.And all the moral arguments are now touted as an excuse, the poor people, the single mothers, the sick elderly, etc. But not only as an excuse, they also have to actually give a significant fraction (maybe half of it, I don't know) to the poor so that their game of enriching the elite would not be so obvious.To make it more visual (and extremely simplified) the arrows on the right show the flow of wealth:[code]|-----------------------||~1% ruling elite&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; |&lt;---||-----------------------|&nbsp; &nbsp; ||~70% productive workers|==&gt;=||-----------------------|&nbsp; &nbsp; ||~30% &quot;people in need&quot;&nbsp; |&lt;---||-----------------------|[/code]And probably the worst result of this redistribution of wealth is that it penalizes production and rewards leeching, so the &quot;people in need&quot; class which should've been around 3% or 5% has swelled today to 30% or 50% (depends how you measure it) and it's not an insignificant expense for the state, so the money today moves both UP and DOWN, and the DOWN portion is probably about equal to the UP portion.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Caveman, post: 420738, member: 4026"] @iknowexactly, my premise is not wrong. The welfare state redistributes wealth from the productive to the unproductive, and unproductive are both the ruling elite and the poorest layers of society. Historically the rich (kings, sultans, etc) took all for themselves and their cronies and maybe threw a few peanuts to the poorest. But today when we realize that it's not right to take from the workers and give to the king so he can build a bigger and more opulent palace, the rulers need a better excuse for extorting wealth from the productive workers. And all the moral arguments are now touted as an excuse, the poor people, the single mothers, the sick elderly, etc. But not only as an excuse, they also have to actually give a significant fraction (maybe half of it, I don't know) to the poor so that their game of enriching the elite would not be so obvious. To make it more visual (and extremely simplified) the arrows on the right show the flow of wealth: [code] |-----------------------| |~1% ruling elite |<---| |-----------------------| | |~70% productive workers|==>=| |-----------------------| | |~30% "people in need" |<---| |-----------------------| [/code] And probably the worst result of this redistribution of wealth is that it penalizes production and rewards leeching, so the "people in need" class which should've been around 3% or 5% has swelled today to 30% or 50% (depends how you measure it) and it's not an insignificant expense for the state, so the money today moves both UP and DOWN, and the DOWN portion is probably about equal to the UP portion. [/QUOTE]

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