Any attempt to equalize wealth or income by forced redistribution must only tend to destroy wealth and income. Historically the best the would-be equalizers have ever succeeded in doing is to equalize downward. This has even been caustically described as their intention. “Your levellers,” said Samuel Johnson in the mid-eighteenth century, “wish to
[ Chapter One of The Conquest of Poverty . ] The history of poverty is almost the history of mankind. The ancient writers have left us few specific accounts of it. They took it for granted. Poverty was the normal lot.The ancient world of Greece and Rome, as modern historians reconstruct it, was a world where houses had no chimneys, and rooms,
Cualquier intento de igualar riqueza o renta mediante redistribución forzosa solo debe tender a destruir la riqueza y la renta. Históricamente, lo más que han conseguido los supuestos igualadores ha sido igualar a la baja. Esto ha sido incluso descrito cáusticamente como su intención. «Vuestros niveladores», dijo Samuel Johnson a mediados del
[ Capítulo Uno de The Conquest of Poverty .] La historia de la pobreza es casi la historia de la humanidad. Los antiguos escritores nos han dejado pocos relatos específicos al respecto. Lo dieron por sentado. La pobreza era lo normal. El mundo antiguo de Grecia y Roma, tal como lo reconstruyen los historiadores modernos, era un mundo en el que las
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The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.