My brother often appreciates one the clients his organisation deals with. He works tirelessly to grow his business, sacrificing sleep and ignoring illness in order to meet the deadlines. Doesn’t such a person deserve a prosperous financial status?
On the other hand there are several individuals who exhibit laziness, always tired cutting corners in their work, taking sick leave at the slightest excuse, procrastinating on important tasks and making minimal efforts to fulfil their responsibilities. Do such individuals deserve same level of rewards as those who put in their utmost efforts to progress in their realms?
Socialism advocates economic equality via the redistribution of wealth, aiming to create a society with reduced economic disparity. Superficially, it seems like creating a fair and just society where all people are having the same standard of life. However, the idea has fundamental flaws.
If everyone is given the same amount of payment for whatever work they do, it is pretty unjustified to the ones who put extra efforts. The situation is quite disappointing to the hard workers who see the lazy getting the same rewards as that of themselves. Consequently, their motivation to put extra efforts is diminished.
A socialist economy is prone to produce stagnant societies. The inability to yield any personal benefits demotivates individuals to take entrepreneurial risk taking. Moreover, the technological advancement in the society is also hampered, as the lack of individual profit reduces motivation for innovation.
Socialist economies are more likely to produce a scenario where there is more diffusion of responsibility. When something is owned by everyone, everyone expects every other one to put efforts for its safety and progress. Consequently, no one tries to unfold one’s true potential causing stagnation to the personal and collective growth.
While implementation of true socialism is challenging, some regions have experimented with it by imposing a limit on the personal wealth. Nevertheless, this idea doesn’t appear to be a wise approach to me.
By putting a limit to an individual’s financial growth, the system puts the limit to the overall economy of the state. Wealthy individuals are a source of building new businesses, and thus a source of generating more employment. Higher rate of employment in the society is directly promotional to economic growth, decreased poverty levels and improved living standards. More employment means more tax payers, and thus more revenue with the government to initiate sustainable welfare projects.
If a limit is put to an individual’s financial status, the tax collection is also reduced. A person owning a hundred million dollar is surely going to add more net worth to the government revenues as compared to a person stopped at 1 million dollars. Moreover, the tax that would be generated by the employees hired by the new businesses is also hampered.
The critic of capitalism argue that it exacerbates economic inequality, allowing the rich to accumulate more easily. However , capping a person’s fiscal growth is not a viable solution to ethical practices may address these issues.
For instance, government should ensure that organisations are paying their employees apt amount of salaries. The money earned should equate the efforts required by the work. Additionally, the responsible allocation of the collected tax ensures the availability of basic needs to the masses.
Moreover, creating policies about the limit of profit generation on various products may also help in reducing economic disparity.
Furthermore, by fostering strong ethical values among the professionals helps prevent the misuse of the power and exploitation of those under their influence. For instance, a doctor with strong moral values will not suggest any unnecessary test to their clients just to earn some commission from the lab.
In my opinion, corruption but not the capitalism is the real culprit for creating massive economic disparity. When individuals get away with public funds or take hold of national resources to yield selfish benefits at the cost of their nation’s prosperity, the economic disparity rises. So strong policies against corruption may help building a more prosperous society.
In essence, to address the issue of economic disparity caused by capitalism it is not a wise idea to limit an individual’s fiscal growth. Curbing an individual’s growth negatively effects the overall economic condition of the state leading towards a weak economic state. Therefore, the issue of economic disparity should be addressed by targeted policies and ethical practices.
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This post is my participation for Hive Learner’s featured contest edition 128 week 2.
Image created by me using Bing AI