Redistribution of wealth

“ In like manner the upper and middle classes, whose employments are of a pecuniary character, if any, are also not seriously affected; and when avowed socialistic sentiment is met with among these upper and middle classes it commonly turns out to be merely a humanitarian aspiration for a more "equitable" redistribution of wealth—a readjustment of ownership under some new and improved method of control—not a contemplation of the traceless disappearance of ownership. ”

“ The full proof of the possibility of effecting such an artificial redistribution, without fatally diminishing the production of wealth, may be left to thoughtful reformers who have leisure to construct a new system of political economy, resting on principles not yet fully discovered. ”

“ And one of the principal reasons why we favor a graduated income tax, which increases by geometrical progression as the income increases, is that it automatically keeps the wealth of the country in a constant sort of redistribution, and acts as a check upon that excessive accumulation which is recognized by all intelligent thinkers as one of the most serious perils and intolerable evils of our present era of class legislation. ”

“ Now my sole object in dealing with the national income at all is to show how far it is susceptible of redistribution; and it is perfectly certain that no existing political party would attempt, or even desire, to redistribute the rents of any class except the large proprietors only. ”

“ It is not in the relations of capital and labour, it is not in the pressure of population against subsistence, that an explanation of the unequal development of our civilization is to be found. The great cause of inequality in the distribution of wealth is inequality in the ownership of land. ”

“ We have seen that wages and interest must everywhere be fixed by the rent line or margin of cultivation—that is to say, by the reward which labor and capital can secure on land for which no rent is paid; that the aggregate amount of wealth, which the aggregate of labor and capital employed in production will receive, will be the amount of wealth produced (or rather, when we consider taxes, the net amount) , minus what is taken as rent. ”

“ For this, at least, is now clear—that the cause which, in spite of the enormous increase of productive power, confines the great body of producers to the least share of the product upon which they will consent to live, is not the limitation of capital, nor yet the limitation of the powers of nature which respond to labor. As it is not, therefore, to be found in the laws which bound the production of wealth, it must be sought in the laws which govern distribution. ”

“ To extirpate poverty, to make wages what justice commands they should be, the full earnings of the laborer, we must therefore substitute for the individual ownership of land a common ownership. Nothing else will go to the cause of the evil—in nothing else is there the slightest hope.
This, then, is the remedy for the unjust and unequal distribution of wealth apparent in modern civilization, and for all the evils which flow from it:
We must make land common property. ”

“ Imagine certain capitalists transported, with their capital in appropriate forms, to such a place. Manifestly, they would get, as the return for their capital, the whole amount of wealth it produced only so long as none of its produce was demanded as rent. When rent arose, it would come out of the produce of capital, and as it increased, the return to the owners of capital must necessarily diminish. ”

“ For, since the distribution of wealth is a division, in ascertaining what fixes the share of the produce that goes as rent, we ascertain also what fixes the share that is left for wages, where there is no cooperation of capital; and what fixes the joint share that is left for wages and interest, where capital does cooperate in production. ”

“ From such causes as these, in almost all countries of great landowners, the majority of landed estates are deeply mortgaged; and instead of having capital to spare for improvements, it requires all the increased value of laud, caused by the rapid increase of the wealth and population of the country, to preserve the class from being impoverished. ”

“ Isn't it a fact that, the smaller the dividends, the larger the wages? Both come from the same fund, the wealth produced; doesn't the prosperity of one cut against the prosperity of the other? So that, for labor to get its full product, profit must be abolished, and coöperation introduced? ”

“ Does the manufacturer, the merchant, the landlord, owe his wealth of accumulated labor to his own activity and the industry of his ancestors? Is the want of capital, the poverty of the toiling proletarians solely due to their own and their fathers' fault? But if the present inequality of fortune is not solely due to the economically correct action of the property-holding class and the shiftlessness of the non-possessing class, to what other cause can it be attributed? ”

“ Now it happens that we know with substantial accuracy what the gross amount of the income of the nation now is, and I will presently show what is the utmost which each individual could hope for from the most successful attempt at a redistribution of everything. ”

“ As regards distribution and wages, in the first place we should adhere to our traditional policy, developing the system of differential and graduated taxation, and we should be prepared, if unequal distribution of wealth continues, to limit further the right of inheritance. ”

“ Now, here are two men of equal incomes—that of the one derived from the exertion of his labor, that of the other from the rent of land. Is it just that they should equally contribute to the expenses of the state? Evidently not. The income of the one represents wealth he creates and adds to the general wealth of the state; the income of the other represents merely wealth that he takes from the general stock, returning nothing.418 The right of the one to the enjoyment of his income rests on the warrant of nature, which returns wealth to labor ”

“ However, even if the menace of population is avoided, even if the general level of production is raised, and if, besides, the distributive outcome laid down as a goal for the policy of wage settlement is attained, nevertheless, there would remain a considerable measure of inequality of wealth. ”

“ We have now seen that while advancing population tends to advance rent, so all the causes that in a progressive state of society operate to increase the productive power of labor tend, also, to advance rent, and not to advance wages or interest. The increased production of wealth goes ultimately to the owners of land in increased rent ”

“ But I shall not deny, and do not wish to lose sight of the fact, that while thus preventing waste and thus adding to the efficiency of labor, the equalization in the distribution of wealth that would result from the simple plan of taxation that I propose, must lessen the intensity with which wealth is pursued. It seems to me that in a condition of society in which no one need fear poverty, no one would desire great wealth—at least, no one would take the trouble to strive and to strain for it as men do now. ”

“ Thus, increase of population, as it operates to extend production to lower natural levels, operates to increase rent and reduce wages as a proportion, and may or may not reduce wages as a quantity; while it seldom can, and probably never does, reduce the aggregate production of wealth as compared with the aggregate expenditure of labor, but on the contrary increases, and frequently largely increases it. ”

“ The unequal distribution of money and the unequal distribution of population both contribute to increase poverty. That country should be accounted the richest, in which wealth is most equally distributed—that is, in which there is the smallest proportion of paupers. ”

“ The one receives without producing; the others produce without receiving. The one is unjustly enriched; the others are robbed. To this fundamental wrong we have traced the unjust distribution of wealth which is separating modern society into the very rich bind the very poor. ”

“ If land in large bodies can be cultivated more cheaply than land in small bodies, to restrict ownership to small bodies will reduce the aggregate production of wealth, and, in so far as such restrictions are imposed and take effect, will they tend to diminish the general productiveness of labor and capital. ”

“ To be sure this vast increase had gone chiefly to make the rich richer, increasing the gap between them and the poor; but the fact remained that, as a means merely of producing wealth, capital had been proved efficient in proportion to its consolidation. The restoration of the old system with the subdivision of capital, if it were possible, might indeed bring back a greater equality of conditions, with more individual dignity and freedom, but it would be at the price of general poverty and the arrest of material progress. ”

“ If for any great object of justice or philanthropic policy, such as the industrial regeneration of Ireland, or a comprehensive measure of colonization or of public education, it were proposed to raise a large sum by way of loan, politicians need not demur to the abstraction of so much capital, as tending to dry up the permanent sources of the country's wealth, and diminish the fund which supplies the subsistence of the labouring population. ”

“ In countries the most widely differing—under conditions the most diverse as to government, as to industries, as to tariffs, as to currency—you will find distress among the working classes; but everywhere that you thus find distress and destitution in the midst of wealth you will find that the land is monopolized; that instead of being treated as the common property of the whole people, it is treated as the private property of individuals; that, for its use by labor, large revenues are extorted from the earnings of labor. ”

“ A plenty of currency induced legislative bodies to increase their wages; governments to increase their expenses, extend their patronage, and bestow pensions; and capitalists to increase protecting duties; and has taught us, by woful experience, the effects of a redundancy of money. It is used by the property-transferring policy to augment its incomes, and ultimately to punish the credulity which believes that a plethora of money will advance the wealth or happiness of majorities. ”

“ There is but one remedy—the redressing of the balance, the redistribution of the population. If we fear, as was feared of old, this will increase the population by making the people too comfortable, let us remember that by a perfectly comprehensible law of Nature, the poor increase faster than the rich, increase, as our fathers said, "like lice and flies," while the rich have much ado to prevent their stock from dying out. ”

“ But in our days the principal object is to support the lower classes from their own multiplication, and for this purpose, an unequal division of property seems to me the more favourable scheme; because the wealth of the rich falls naturally into the pockets of the industrious poor; whereas the produce of a very middling fortune, does no more than feed the children of the proprietor, who in course become very commonly and very naturally an useless burthen upon the land. ”

“ What more, consistently with the rights of property, can he done to distribute wealth justly among those who earn it, or to equalize the pecuniary condition of mankind?
The result of the system would be, that the future accumulations of society, instead of being held, as now, in large estates, by a few individuals, while the many were in poverty, would be distributed in small estates among the mass of the people. The large estates already acquired by single indi­viduals, would, in two or three generations, at most, become entirely scattered. ”

“ This being the case, if the term interest were used, as consistently with their definitions it should have been used, to represent the third part of the division of the produce, all rewards of personal exertion, save those of what are commonly called wage-workers, would clearly have been left out. But by treating the division of wealth as between rent, wages, and profits, instead of between rent, wages, and interest, this difficulty is glossed over, all wages which will not fall under the preaccepted law of wages being vaguely grouped under profits, as wages of superintendence. ”

“ It is equally difficult to doubt that a division of landed property may be carried to such an extent as to destroy all the benefits to be derived from the accumulation of capital and the division of labour, and to occasion the most extended poverty. ”