Can I get an example of an “advanced capitalist democracy” that has a lower unemployment rate, a healthier economy, and more productivity than the U.S.? Even now? Most of Europe would give an arm to have an unemployment rate as low as 6 percent.

America is filled with sociologists, economists, and others who are absolutely certain that if only they could just get rid of the inequitable market forces and get their own hands on the controls, paradise would certainly result.

That they can still think like this in the face of a century of almost total failure of planned economies amazes me.

You know, navigation is a complicated thing, and back in, say, the late 18th Century, it was not uncommon even for expert professional sailors to find themselves off by a couple of hundred miles in their reckonings. This circumstance, of course, lead to the total abandonement of any attempt to navigate, and today’s preference for travelers arriving at their destination, not through any “planning,” but through the natural and infallible operation of market forces. The trick lay in getting travelers to accept that where they ended up was where they should have been going all along.

Do you mean to say that you don’t think income/wealth equality is a worthwhile thing to consider, or are you putting forth productivity and efficiency as indicators of income/wealth equality?

Not sure what point you’re trying to make here. An analogy between centralized economic planning and the individual planning of private endeavors doesn’t hold up. Or are you assuming that unless the government personally tells me what roads to take to drive from here to Sacramento that I would become hopelessly lost?

No. I don’t. Every place I can think of where income has been forcibly “equalized” is a poverty-stricken hellhole. And, not surprisingly, said hellholes are usually ruled by a tiny elite which seems to have a special exemption to the idea of “income equalization.”

And if anyone tries to draw some form of moral equivalence between mass murdering thugs like Saddam and American billionaires like Bill Gates, simply because both have a lot of money, I wouldn’t if I were you.

Eliminating the inheritance tax, and removing taxes on dividends and capital gains would go a long way toward fostering such a system…

Bearing in mind that we’re not talking about absolute income or wealth equality, would you consider the 1950s and 1960s in the US to be a poverty-stricken hellhole?

I mean, obviously you’re thinking of a few specific places, which are far to the extreme of what anyone here is talking about. Care to pull away from the extreme, and talk about something more reasonable, like this country thirty to fifty years ago? I’m not saying you can’t still have your point of view, but the moderate places make for a much more interesting discussion.

I don’t mind if the rich get richer faster than I get rich, so long as I get richer too.

I am also curious about this. My gut reaction says that extreme inequality is bad in and of itself, but so far (and not, mind you, that I’ve looked much) I can’t really support that.