The Economics of Socialism (10 Seconds) and Unintended Consequences (4 Seconds)

Three years ago, I shared a cartoon that succinctly summarized the problem with socialism and the welfare state.

It’s the same lesson that we also get from Thomas Sowell, which is that redistribution over time creates an ever-larger number of dependents financed by ever-higher taxes on workers.

Or, as this Wizard-of-Id parody and this Little-Red-Hen parody make clear, why work hard if you can get things for free?

Now I have a different way of illustrating the problem with socialism. Here’s a very clever tweet from Young Americans Against Socialism.

Under socialism, both of these dogs would be paid the same. pic.twitter.com/81bM3NKgVz

— Young Americans Against Socialism (@YAAS_America) August 27, 2019

Very clever and amusing. I will add this short video to my collection of socialism humor, but it actually makes a very serious point. Socialists and other redistributionists want equality of outcomes, but they don’t think about the unintended consequences of such an approach. Some people will be lured into sloth and dependency, for instance, while others – particularly those with greater ability and/or greater work ethic – will choose to be less productive (especially because they also get hit with higher tax burdens to finance all the handouts). Bastiat wrote that the failure to consider the “unseen” was the defining quality of a bad economist. And since we’re on that topic, here’s an example of Crazy Bernie failing to appreciate that actions have unintended consequences.

Sen. @BernieSanders takes on a speed bag. pic.twitter.com/HwLQLOqO0s

— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) August 27, 2019

A perfect metaphor for what would happen to the economy if some of his policies were imposed on the economy.

Except Bernie would still have his comfortable life. It’s the rest of us who would suffer.

———
Image credit: Gage Skidmore | CC BY-SA 2.0.