Wealth gaps are harmless
“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.”
Since I was a child, the heroic tales of Robin Hood and All men are brothers had always triggered suspicions inside me. Robin and the Liang Shan heroes were praised for robbing the rich to pay the poor, for stamping upon laws are rules and having their own ways. And I’d ask, “What did the rich men do to deserve such things?” It’s the same question we’d ask ourselves today, when trying to solve the widening wealth gap with taxation, which is a milder way of redistributing wealth, but more or less of the same nature.
The debate has gone on for centuries and I find myself swinging from one viewpoint to another. And after placing careful thoughts into the matter, I am finally able to put my finger on it. The problem isn’t how we should narrow wealth gaps, because that’s not our goal. Wealth gaps are perfectly harmless, not even the widest ones. I do not care how much more money a billionaire has than me as long as I’m comfortable with my own life, as long as I have food on my plate, a roof over my head, a chance to be educated and some sense of security. And I’m pretty sure most people in the middle-class wouldn’t care how rich people from upper-class are. Perhaps a tint of jealousness can be sensed but greed is within our human nature, nothing to be taken too seriously about. So the real evil here isn’t the gap, the mathematical range of wealth, but unsatisfied basic needs. Poverty is doing all the harm.
Solving poverty is what we need to focus on instead. Satisfying basic needs is the real goal here. I think we should eliminate the lower class by shifting everyone in the lower class to the middle class. You might ask, how can a middle class still be “middle” if there’s nothing beneath? When I talk about “upper” “middle” or “lower”， I’m not referring to its relative place on a vertical scale. I’m talking about a status of life. Especially if you look at China, a lower-classer might be a peasant who earns a few hundred Yuan per year and has soybean and rice for lunch. A middle-classer is someone like me, with all the necessities covered and can afford luxuries only sometimes. Say, one day all the peasant in China become middle-classers, would that make me feel like a peasant? I doubt it.
You might say, hey don’t fool me! Where does all the money come from if we are to solve poverty? Though taxation. Are we back to where we started? Robbing the rich to pay the poor? Kind of, but not exactly the same. We all know that wealth is constant, to make the poor richer must mean making the rich poorer. But our goal is solving poverty, and in this process, we narrow the wealth gap to some extent. The narrowing of wealth gaps is only the result of solving poverty, itself alone is never the goal. There is a difference and I shall explain it.
Solving poverty is an action well justified and benefits all. When a large portion of the population is under extreme poverty, the society is highly unstable. Once the bottom feeders realize that all their ways have been blocked, they will rebel and literally “fuck” their way through society causing unnecessary damages. It’s the government’s duty to appease these angry men by offering them necessities. If the wealthy people can think straight, they’d be happy to pay taxes to sponsor the government. It’s for the greater good on the long run. Because once riots break, and the world is in complete chaos, the wealthy people can’t maintain their wealth and under jungle ethics, they might do very poorly. It’s like the constitution. Citizens gave up some freedom willingly in exchange for protection and security. Wealthy people make some sacrifices for lower risks of losing their wealth. Therefore we solve poverty out of a rational cause; it has nothing to do with fairness.
Narrowing wealth gaps and redistributing wealth just for the sake of being equal is something very different. Being equal is never the responsibility of the government because taking stuff from the rich to pay the poor is not heroic, it’s piratic. Such actions shouldn’t be tolerated. My grandma was born in a landlord family; they hired peasants to cultivate their land by giving them a portion of crop earnings. The communists could not stand this, they decided to redistribute land and wealth. My grandma and her entire family were stripped from everything. They didn’t even get to keep a blanket for the winter. My great great grandpa was executed for being a landlord. The rest of the family went off begging on the street. It’s a sad story. Rich people aren’t sinners; they’re merely better players in a real life chess game. I can’t see how robbing them so that everyone can be equal should be allowed.
Besides, absolute equality is impossible. Even if one day everyone has the exact same amount of coins, what about looks? Is it fair that some girls are prettier and some guys are cuter than the rest? No. What do we have to do if we want equality? Should the government pass a law allowing us to pour sulfuric acid over their faces?