Must read of the day

I would say that the temptation to redistribute from the rich to the poor is the tragic pursuit of a mirage.

Word. Doctor Zero has been writing some fantastic pieces over at Hot Air.

Collectivists sell their politics with a promise of “equality,” generally understood by their audience as a promise to redistribute the wealth of the rich to improve the lives of the poor… but this is a lie. The upper class in a communist, fascist, or socialist government is fantastically wealthy. Most of the “redistribution” comes at the expense of the middle class, which shrinks as the lower class grows. Every form of collectivist government, including twenty-first century American socialism, declares war on the middle class, or tries to lure them into submission with promises of benefits.

Spreading the wealth around inevitable means one thing - reducing the relative wealth of the middle class, while doing nothing to the truly rich. The rich are always rich. They have the ability to avoid paying those nasty taxes, or the connections to insure that they benefit from government largess.

The fundamental political purpose of State-controlled health care is to transform much of the middle class into the lower class. The economic damage from spending trillions of dollars on a monstrous new government program in the middle of a recession is a feature, not a bug. A middle class dependent on the benevolence of the State for its health care will become less troublesome, less independent, and less able to begin the climb into the upper class through small business formation. Fewer small businesses means fewer working poor rising into the middle class.

Read the whole thing.