Since you did not redistribute productivity the inequality would immediately start establishing itself again.
If you want an iPad you must pay those who know how to design and make an iPad. If you want a taco you must pay those who sell tacos, or at least have the ingredients to make a taco. So those who produce more than they consume would immediately start getting wealthier, while those who consumed more than they produce would start getting poorer.
Remember, very few people inherited their wealth. What they have is what they earned in their lifetime by providing goods and services that others wanted.
Now, as a practical matter, doing this would cause some side effects that would make it impractical. Equalizing wealth would wipe out small business, including many family farms, which have wealth in the assets of the business. It would also cause unemployment increases: everyone employed in producing luxury goods, automobiles, boats, etc., would find themselves out of a job.
The effect on business investment is especially hard to predict. Having money in the form of pieces of green paper is not the same as being wealthy. Wealth is what that money can buy, what you can get with it. All we can really do is redistribute pieces of green paper. But the political process cannot command items to appear on store shelves, as the example of the Soviet Union should remind us. It is quite possible that as scheme like that described in the question would merely lead to poverty for all.
Read other related questions on Quora:
- If all the wealth in the US were divided equally among adult citizens, how much would that be, per person?
- Why is the wealth distribution in Denmark so unequal when its income equality is among the highest in the world?
- What would happen if wealth were distributed based on how hard each person tried to contribute to society?
from Quora http://ift.tt/29dGZTP
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