Envidia e ignorancia

Muy relacionado con lo que venimos hablando sobre Argentina, Thomas Sowell en su última columna habla sobre el gravísimo riesgo de que el gobierno tenga el poder de decidir cuanto debe ganar cada persona.

Cuánta razón tiene cuando dice que es muy peligroso establecer políticas de estado basadas en el sesgo ideológico, la envidia y la ignorancia:

If this obsession with income disparities is to be something more than mere hand-wringing or gnashing of teeth, obviously the point is that somebody ought to "do something" to change what you don't understand.

Usually that means that the government -- politicians -- should impose policies based on your ignorance of what is going on. Can you imagine anything more dangerous than allowing politicians to decide how much money each of us can earn?

Of course, such political control of incomes is usually advocated only to deal with "the rich." But, when income taxes were imposed in the early 20th century, they applied only to "the rich" and they took a very small percentage of their income.

Once the floodgates are opened to this kind of political power, however, we have seen with the income taxes that they not only spread far beyond "the rich," they took a serious share of even middle class incomes.