Criticisms of Socialism - Reduced Prosperity

Reduced Prosperity

According to economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe, countries where the means of production are socialized are not as prosperous as those where the means of production are under private control. Ludwig von Mises, a classical liberal economist, argued that aiming for more equal incomes through state intervention necessarily leads to a reduction in national income and therefore average income. Consequently, the socialist chooses a more equal distribution of income, on the assumption that the marginal utility of income to a poor person is greater than that to a rich person. According to Mises, this mandates a preference for a lower average income over inequality of income at a higher average income. He sees no rational justification for this preference.

Read more about this topic:  Criticisms Of Socialism

Famous quotes containing the words reduced and/or prosperity:

    Realism, whether it be socialist or not, falls short of reality. It shrinks it, attenuates it, falsifies it; it does not take into account our basic truths and our fundamental obsessions: love, death, astonishment. It presents man in a reduced and estranged perspective. Truth is in our dreams, in the imagination.
    Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)

    I have no hesitation in saying that although the American woman never leaves her domestic sphere and is in some respects very dependent within it, nowhere does she enjoy a higher station. And ... if anyone asks me what I think the chief cause of the extraordinary prosperity and growing power of this nation, I should answer that it is due to the superiority of their women.
    Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)