Income distribution

[Harry L Cook <hlc710@xxxxxxxx>]

It has always seemed to me that insofar as human welfare and social
justice is concerned,  income distribution should be among the most
central of our concerns, yet judging from the literature it is so far
down the list you can't find it.

Ricardo felt the same, although possibly for other reasons, when he
said:

On The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation
London: John Murray, Albemarle-Street,
by David Ricardo, 1817
(third edition 1821)

PREFACE

     The produce of the earth - all that is derived from its
surface by the united application of labour, machinery, and
capital, is divided among three classes of the community; namely,
the proprietor of the land, the owner of the stock or capital
necessary for its cultivation, and the labourers by whose
industry it is cultivated.
     But in different stages of society, the proportions of the
whole produce of the earth which will be allotted to each of
these classes, under the names of rent, profit, and wages, will
be essentially different; depending mainly on the actual
fertility of the soil, on the accumulation of capital and
population, and on the skill, ingenuity, and instruments employed
in agriculture.
     To determine the laws which regulate this distribution, is
the principal problem in Political Economy:

The profession more or less abandoned the income side of the picture for
the more technically interesting and challenging production side early
on, but there has always been a suspicion in some quarters that there
was more than a little truth in the sentiment expressed below by Henry
C.K. Liu.

"Of course, income disparity and unequal distribution of wealth are part
and partial of capitalism.  They are the necessary ingredients of
capital formulation.  Social morality aside, as Rick Ackerman rejects it
as poppycock, these characteristics are at one the strengths and
weaknesses of capitalism.  The strength are obvious, they make
capitalist productive efficiency possible.  The weaknesses are less
obvious because the entire profession of economics exist mostly to made
these weaknesses obscure with smoke and mirrors".

							Harry L. Cook