pingouin says: Redistribution of wealth? Any transaction is a redistribution of wealth
Indeed, the term is (necessarily) misleading. "Redistribution of wealth" means: transfer of an individual's money, without his consent, to another individual, with his consent. The misleading terminology allows the concept's proponents to disguise several facts:
- It is immoral. The government has no moral right to take my hard-earned money, at the point of a gun (or the threat thereof), and give it to someone who hasn't earned it, for no other reason than that they haven't earned it.
- It is a violation of property rights. By "redistributing wealth," the government is saying, in effect, that the person who produces has no right to the values he produced, but that the right to those values belongs instead to whoever claims the greatest need.
- It hurts the economy. When one is rewarded for the fact that he's not being productive, the rational thing for him to do, if he has little ability or a great disinclination to work, is to be as unproductive as possible, since that keeps the flow of cash coming. As the rewards increase, so does the number of men for whom it is now rational to be unproductive. (Notice that while rewarding poverty contributes to its spread, the government becomes more adamant about "fighting" it, which it does by rewarding it. Ask yourself how long this can go on.)