Summarize the content below in your own words while using a portion of the quote

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Summarize the content below in your own words while using a portion of the quoted material. (Please provide an answer that is NO LESS THAN 300 words in content):

The West has progressively sought income equality as a moral goal through the use of the state. How is this justified, and has it worked? The ethic of income distribution in a free society is "to each according to what he and the instruments he owns produce." If one man prefers to produce less and spend more time in leisure, and another the opposite for more income, equality of treatment is also important. Paying them the same amount exhibits unequal treatment.

Differing tastes for risk result in income inequality too. Redistributing the winnings of a lottery so that no one loses effectively denies all entrants the opportunity of entering the lottery in the first place; redistributing through taxes the earnings of investors who take risks to those who did not or who did and lost similarly deny people's ability to take risks. "The girl who chooses to become an actress rather than a civil servant is deliberately choosing to enter a lottery."

Progressive taxation is much like redistributing lottery winnings; "taxes are imposed after it is already largely known who have drawn the prizes and who the blanks in the lottery of life.”

Inequality stems from inheritances also, raising ethical difficulties. The distinction is untimely untenable. What's the difference between inheriting a beautiful voice from a large estate? A wealthy man can pay for his son's training, set him up in business or make him a trust fund. Does it matter ethically that the child receives wealth from, respectively, his capabilities, his earnings or his inheritance, when he is likely to be wealthy regardless? It's illogical to say a man may not pass what he has earned onto his children as he pleases; that is his freedom. This does not make the capitalist ethic right. "I am led to the view that it cannot in and of itself be regarded as an ethical principle; that it must be regarded as instrumental or a corollary of some other principle such as freedom."

If you and three friends are walking down the street and you spy a $20 bill. Are your friends justified in demanding you split the findings evenly? "Are we prepared to urge on ourselves or our fellows that any person whose wealth exceeds the average of all persons in the world should immediately dispose of the excess by distributing it equally to all the rest of the world's inhabitants? … Such a ‘potlatch’ would make a civilized world impossible."

We can't decide who deserves what through coercion. Most wealth disparities can be seen as chance; the hard worker is deserving, yet owes these qualities to the fortune of good genes. Despite lip service paid to 'merit' over 'chance,' we accept inequalities of chance more easily than inequalities of merit. "The goddess of chance, as of justice, is blind."

Individuals cooperate to satisfy wants efficiently. If each gets only what they put in, exchange is not beneficial. Payment based on product is necessary to encourage efficient resources allocation. The alternative is compulsion. One cannot be compelled to put in their best effort. Still, payment based on product wouldn't be tolerated if not believed just. "Even the severest internal critics of capitalism have implicitly accepted payment in accordance with product as ethically fair."

The biggest criticism come from Marxists, who say labor is exploited by producing the whole of the product but receiving only part. This is valid only if labor is entitled to what it produces–the capitalist ethic. The alternative socialist ethic, "to each according to his need, from each according to his ability," would mean that labor were entitled only to what it needs, not what it produces. This is only one of many confusing issues in Marxism.

Inequalities in wealth create the patrons of the arts and sciences that make life-improving art and innovations for all; it is the very wealthy which fund artists and new technology companies that would not be funded by governments or individuals in socialist systems.

Capitalist system are characterized by "considerable inequality of income and wealth." But not more so than other systems. Though criticized for materialism, the more capitalistic a country, the less spent on capital accumulation and the more paid towards worker’s productive capacities. In underdeveloped nations, nearly half of income is property based; in the developed world that accounts for only one fifth. "The great achievement of capitalism has not been the accumulation of property, it has been the opportunities it has offered to men and women to extend and develop and improve their capacities."

"There is surely drastically less inequality in Western capitalist societies … than in a status society like India or a backward country like Egypt." Capitalism has brought the luxuries of the wealthy to the masses, medicine aside, and have eliminated their backbreaking labor.

Interpreting information on the statistics of income distribution is endlessly complex and open to question. But generally, non-capitalist societies have wider inequality by any measure.

Governments have most often used graduated income and inheritance taxes to distribute income. Friedman concedes that it is not possible to definitively state if this has met their intended goals but believes they have done harm. They discourage the wealthy from becoming wealthier but have not made them less so. They've inspired loopholes that have made them ineffective while wasting the creative energies of our most competent men.

Regardless, they are undesirable. "I find it hard, as a liberal, to see any justification for graduated taxation solely to redistribute income. This seems a clear case of using coercion to take from some in order to give to others and thus a head-on conflict with individual freedom." Friedman generally suggests a flat-tax structure as the most just, set at 23.5%, which he believes would deincentivize tax-avoidance loopholes and actually increase overall revenues.

Explanation / Answer

“Trade is the nerve center of economy and economy is the nerve center of nation state. War is essential and inevitable for enforcing trade”, said Louie XIV, King of France.
(The above French King statement propelled various East India Companies that were backed by the then European geo-political economic powers which led to various colonial proxy wars over a century for domination of Asian African resources both human and natural).

With war in European theatre and Pacific theatre concluded in 1945 and mid east oil secured how to sustain the war economy in post war era was a big problem for the policy makers of western nations of who ‘won’ the war. War of 7 years created huge number of jobs, good salaries, demand for especially American goods (arms guns cars, electronic gadgets) and it boosted economy. When all that was over no one wants American war machinery which means they have to shut down factories and lay off workers. This will shrink economies and limit exports. The economies will enter in to recession. There has to be a continuous demand for US war goods which means there should be a continuous demand for wars in future. Or they have to shift in to civilian goods production and world should demand those from US. This will make world countries demand dollars to buy the American goods.

There comes the project NEOLIBERALISM. "Neo" means we are talking about a new kind of liberalism. The liberal school of economics became famous in Europe when Adam Smith, Scottish economist, published a book in 1776 called THE WEALTH OF NATIONS. He and others advocated the abolition of government intervention in economic matters. No restrictions on manufacturing, no barriers to commerce, no tariffs, he said; free trade was the best way for a nation's economy to develop.

Demand for $ Only.

150 countries demanding Mideast oil for last 50 years have to pay only in Dollars. So they started demanding US dollars and US was printing more and more dollars every year. In any country such printing of currency will result in terrific inflation. But inflation never resulted in US as they are transferring all those dollars to world countries and are happy in getting the commission on selling dollars. Not only that every country was holding dollars for future oil buying. Prices never rose as long as all these dollars were backed by gold standard by US to keep US domestic inflation in check.

Billions of dollars are sucked in to Middle East and from there sucked back into US economy by genuine sale of sophisticated war toys to Arab states. For Israel these toys are free or near free. With the surplus of dollars flowing in to US economy US was able to keep the jobs, salaries, life style of America and marketed themselves as land of honey and milk on earth. It was sold as American dream. Anyone can have anything there. Land of eternal work, perpetual prosperity etc. Why? Every country is paying on every litter of petrol they purchased for the prosperity of expensive dream like US life style.

With surplus funds US started buying gold to back dollar domestically to avoid local inflation. Here gold became reserve currency and US started hoarding gold equivalent to the dollar circulation in US economy. This way they virtually avoided domestic inflation. It also helped to keep inflation or price rice within reasonable limits as the post war US rulers are more sensible and true to their American ideals of entrepreneurial freedom. All the above they did is not for their bank balances but to save the American Way of prosperity, to help their citizens. From American perspective it is well and ok. The spoils of this prosperity was shared by the 5 sisters (USA, England, Australia, New Zealand and Canada). In order to hide this from public weird economic theories were thrown on public and for six decades everyone was studying them with eager interest.

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