Column 2018-3 (10/29/18)
The goods and services available to
consumers today exceed anything ever seen in the past. Obviously
some consumers have far more access to this wealth than do others.
Still, even the poorest have more than they did a generation ago.
The percent of the world’s population living in absolute poverty
has decreased dramatically. In general those who produce more have
more.
There are several things that affect
an individual’s ability to be productive. These things include
ability, environment and availability of resources. The willingness
of others to cooperate is also very important.
Technology and tools are indispensable
to productivity. Take away our vast array of technology and
production facilities from farms, factories, mines, transportation,
etc. and no one will be very productive. Maximizing all the other
factors that are essential to productivity would do little to lift us
above stone age levels of productivity and a stone age standard of
living.
We owe almost everything we have to
past generations that built up the accumulated knowledge and
production facilities. We do our part. Without what our ancestors
willed to us we couldn’t come close to producing what we do today.
If we add to the accumulated wealth,
the next generation will
be able to produce even more.
Any
generation could go on a spending binge
and consume, rather than maintain and increase, the accumulated
wealth. If that happens, every future generation will suffer from
decreased productivity.
Even
if future generations fully replace the depleted wealth, their
productivity will lag behind what it would have been if the wealth
hadn’t been depleted. Our productivity today suffers from the
destruction of wealth in the major wars and other destructive actions
of past generations. Recovery from the destruction took time. We
will never get that time back.
The past is
chiseled in stone. We can’t change it. The most we can hope for
is to learn from it. Whether we learn or not, we can’t escape
paying the tuition.
We
can party, party, party. We can pay for the party by diverting
wealth from investment in future productivity. We can keep the party
going longer by failing to replace the production facilities passed
to us by past generations.
At
first the decrease in present
productivity will be barely noticed by most. Decreases
in future production don’t show up until the future arrives. Funny
how it works that way. Don’t expect the generations that live in
that future to be laughing.
It
won’t
matter that the spending binge
was well intentioned.
Taking investment capital from the wealthy
and spending in on consumption by
the poor hurts future
productivity just as much as it
would if
the wealthy spent it on their own party.
It
seems
that there might be some moral questions involves in deciding whether
to squander our inheritance, or enhance it and pass it on. Moral or
not, we have the power to squander our inheritance if we so choose.
If the
neosocailists have their way most people will not even see the
questions. We need to ask more than, Shall we tax the wealthy and
spend it on the poor? We need to ask, Shall we consume the
accumulated investment in productivity to the detriment of the future
poor, wealthy, and everyone in between?
It would be most
unfortunate if the present generation choose to squander the
investment in production facilities without even recognizing the
choice they made. The so called socialists want to fool everyone
into letting the socialists squander the investment in future
production. Imagine what life will be like when all of our
production facilities deteriorate to the equivalent of a road full of
potholes.
aldmccallum@gmail.com
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Copyright
2018
Albert
D. McCallum
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