The Fallacy of Income Redistribution

Income redistribution is taking income from one group and giving it to another group. From economic liberals, there is a strong belief that the rich are too rich and some of that money needs to go to the poor. Perhaps this is true, but the suggestion that comes out of this is that we should tax the rich to subsidize the poor.

My opinion on the issue can be summarized in two graphs:

The first graph shows the amount of money the United States government spends per year on anti-poverty programs.


The spending on antipoverty programs was around $2.5 billion in 1962. Today, it is around $616 billion. That's an increase of 24,640% in anti-poverty spending. The next graph shows the United States poverty rate by year:

Wow. We made a slight dent in the poverty rate for the first few years of this antipoverty spending. Notice that the poverty rate did decrease until about 1970. Now look at both graphs from 1970 onward. We increased antipoverty spending about 12,000% (that's twelve thousand percent) with no decrease in the poverty rate.

I do not know what the solution is, but I am pretty sure it is not raising taxes to fund more social programs.

Dictionary Highlights: Day 65

Hitting the dic- section has brought out my inner Beavis and Butthead. Unforseen circumstances of research

dianoia - the mental faculty used in discursive reasoning.

diaphoretic - producing perspiration.

diatreme - a volcanic vent produced in a solid rock structure by the explosive energy of gases in magmas.

Or from a diet of refried beans

dick - detective

Tracy

Dick test - a test for determining immunity or susceptibility to scarlet fever in which scarlet fever toxin is injected into the skin, susceptibility being characterized by redness at the injection area.

I think I'll put this definition on Urban Dictionary

digitalism - the abnormal condition resulting from an overconsumption of digitalis.

Symptoms include the inability to read analog clocks

Dictionary Highlights: Day 64

desorb - to remove an absorbate or adsorbate from (an absorbent or adsorbent).

despiteful - spiteful

Spiteful and despiteful mean the same thing?

destool - to remove (a West African ruler) from office.

I just thought it meant to take a laxative

destrier - a war-horse; charger.

detritivore - an organism that uses organic waste as a food source, as certain insects.

diabolo - a game in which a toplike object is spun, thrown, and caught by or balanced on and whirled along a string the ends of which are fastened to the ends of two sticks that are manipulated by hand.

Dictionary Highlights: Day 63

dendrophagous - feeding on the wood of trees, as certain insects.

dent corn - a variety of field corn, Zea mays indentata, having yellow or white kernels that become indented as they ripen.

depth psychology - any approach to psychology that postulates and studies personality from the standpoint of dynamic and unconscious motivation.

deratization - extermination of rats, esp. aboard a merchant vessel.

derma - beef or fowl intestine used as a casing in preparing certain savory dishes, esp. kishke.

Now they spoiled kishke for me. And I thought that was such good stuff

desmid - any single-celled freshwater algae of the family Desmidiaceae, characterized by a division of the body into mirror-image halves joined by a bridge containing the nucleus, and having a spiny or bristly exterior: sometimes forming into colonies or branching filaments.

Dictionary Highlights: Day 62

deformed bar - a rod for reinforcing concrete, having surface irregularities, as transverse ridges, to improve the bond

Using a deformed bar to keep concrete from becoming deformed

dehisce - to burst open, as capsules of plants; gape.

dekko - (British slang) a look or glance

Take a dekko at Mr. Gekko.

Delhi belly - diarrhea experienced by travelers in a foreign country, who are not accustomed to the local food and water.

Not to be confused with Deli belly

demimetope - the space between the end of a Doric frieze and the first triglyph.

I feel like this is from some weird sci-fi geek site

demisemiquaver - a thirty-second note.

Only you musicians out there would know the obscure names for these notes.

de Moivre's theorem - the theorem that a complex number raised to a given positive integral power is equal to the modulus of the number raised to the power and multiplied by the amplitude times the given power.

Well, DUH!

dendrology - the branch of botany dealing with trees and shrubs.

For this experiment, I'll need. . .another shrubbery!

Dictionary Highlights: Day 61

decollate snail - a cone-shaped, burrowing snail, Rumina decollata, that feeds on common brown garden snails.

I wonder if it has a taste for escargot?

deconstruction - a philosophical and critical movement, starting in the 1960s and esp. applied to the study of literature, that questions all traditional assumptions about the ability of language to represent reality and emphasizes that a text has no stable reference or identification because words essentially only refer to other words and therefore a reader must approach a text by eliminating any metaphysical or ethnocentric assumptions through an active role of defining meaning, sometimes by a reliance on new word construction, etymology, puns, and other word play.

Not quite the same meaning as disassembly

deep fat - hot fat used for deep-frying food.

As opposed to shallow fat?

defender of the bond - an official appointed in each diocese to uphold marriages of disputed validity.

defensive medicine - the practice by a physician of ordering many tests or consultations as a means of self-protection against charges of malpractice in the event of an unfavorable outcome of treatment.

definitive host - the host in or on which a parasite spends the sexual stage of its life cycle.

Normal parties have a host. Frat parties have a definitive host

Dictionary Highlights: Day 60

Dawson Creek - a village in NE British Columbia, Canada, at the SE terminus of the Alaska Highway.

A little cold of a climate for James Van Der Beek

dayan - a judge in a Jewish religious court or a person knowledgeable in Talmudic law whose advice on religious questions is often sought by rabbis.

Biblical Judges usurped by Rabbinic overlords

daymare - a distressing experience, similar to a bad dream, occurring while one is awake.

dead-man's float - a prone floating position, used esp. by beginning swimmers, with face downward, legs extended backward, and arms stretched forward.

Why is it the early survival swimming techniques are the ones with your face underwater