[5/23/10] Progressives Seek to Make the Poor Poorer

I have described in one hundred words how individual economic freedom is a source of productive strength:

Freedom Would Mean More for Everyone

Division of labor among individuals with different skills and talents produces more and gets more done if the division is made by free choice of the individuals; each accomplishes more that way.  Since goods and services are paid for with goods and services, even across borders and oceans, groups and nations accomplish more that way, too.  Prices of goods and services are two things:  the result of those free choices and the information that individuals need to make them intelligently.

To have more, we must reject collectivist schemes that interfere with individual economic freedoms.

Today in the Washington Post, Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute writes of  the new culture war between those who believe that individuals should be free to earn success and those who believe that we must collectively determine individual success.  He argues cogently that earned success is far more emotionally satisfying and thus that the freedom to achieve it is far more moral than the enforcement of equality of result.

Perhaps surprisingly, given the 2008 election results, he reports that in survey after survey 70% of the American people agree!

The self-styled Progressives are the 30% among us believe that only government can improve the lot of the poor.  However equalization of economic result is viewed as immoral by the other 70%.  What's more, just as the welfare riots in Greece killed innocents, the Progressives' goal would have the seemingly contradictory result of making the poor poorer.