I suppose there is a sort of Roschart Test element to these sorts of questions. How about this:

Would it be better to have an economy in which everyone enjoyed 1% growth, or one in which the bottom 25% enjoyed 1% growth while the top 25% enjoyed 5% growth?

The people raking in all the benefits of increases in productivity the last 30 years or so would love it if every stopped complaining about it, yes.

If 1% is shared, and the remaining 4-9% go to the wealthiest, would you then be happy?

That brings to mind the parable of the vineyard where the later workers get paid the same as the earlier ones, and the earlier ones grouse about it. Seems if people were more satisfied with what they have, rather than looking at what the other guy is getting, we would also be better off.

As for tmeporary nationalization of the banking system, I don’t know the purely economic virtues of such a move, but it seems to me one thing foreign investors have liked about the US is the fact it has rarely nationalized segments of the economy. One of the big risk factors of foreign investment is seeing your investment taken over by the gov’t. What would such a move do to confidence in investing in the US? What industry would be the next for “temporary nationalization”?

Man, Straw, etc.

At face value, this principle would mean that if everyone lived in the poverty typical of several hundred years ago, that would be preferable to today’s society (in which everyone is unimaginably wealthy by comparison, but some people are even wealthier). Is that what you think?

I guess there’s a good argument (from Christ’s words) that b/c rich people have a hard time going to heaven, a society that has made so many people so rich isn’t ideal; therefore we really would be better off (in a spiritual sense) if we could abolish grocery stores, the modern health care system, cars, computers, manufactured clothing and furniture, etc., and go back to a world in which everyone was really poor. I haven’t seen you or anyone else around here making that argument, however.

That’s a very interesting issue you raise in the last paragraph. Pope JOhn XXIII in Mater et Magistra says that the equitable distrubution of wealth is more important than the accumulation of wealth. Personally, I would rather a growth rate of 1 percent that is shared than a growth rate of 5-10 percent that goes to the wealthiest.