ECONOMIST: Socialism Comes with Immigrants

[edstate]

"In the blood"
Jun 4th 2009


Attitudes towards redistribution have a strong cultural component.

ARGUMENTS over economic policy are often heated. Debates about the extent to which tax and welfare policy should redistribute wealth from rich to poor tend to be particularly fractious. Understanding why people hold different opinions on the topic interests economists, not least because citizens’ attitudes towards such matters are likely to influence the governments they elect. Some of the evidence from individual countries conforms to standard economic reasoning. Richer people, who have least to gain from redistribution, are usually less keen on it than their poorer compatriots. So are those who think they have a chance of being rich in the future, by moving up the economic ladder.

But opinions about redistribution also seem to vary from one country to another. And this has led economists to ask whether “cultureâ€

[Richard]

When Mexico was under the domination of the PRI for 71 years the party's official stance favored redistribution but in practical terms there was very little social welfare system and the politicians mostly redistributed away from private entrepreneurs to themselves.