Money: Congress can make it, and Congress can take it, it sez so right there in the Constitution, eh? What makes you think your money is yours?

This document is currently under development. Don't expect much yet, and you won't be disappointed. Resources for dealing with wealth will be added. Eventually.

What's With This Wealth Redistribution Crapola?

Some folks may have questions about the redistribution of wealth that occurs in almost any social situation. Questions such as: "Whazzat?" and: "How?" and: "Why?" and: "What's in it for me?" and "What happens next?" I'll attempt to answer these questions here, and make a game out of it, and we can all have fun while we're getting richer and/or poorer and/or insane and/or despondent.

What The Hell is Wealth Redistribution?

Wealth Redistribution (WR) can be defined as "any transfer of resources between individuals or groups". Or it can be defined as "confiscation of property from its rightful owner, for disbursement to the unworthy". Or it can be defined as "equalization of riches, allocated fairly across all social strata". Or it can be summed up as "property is theft". You can probably work up your own definition. Do so now, why doncha?

Operationally, any uneven exchange of stuff is WR. Those who charge too much for products and services, or pay too little for these, are practicing WR. Those who levy excessive taxes, or who evade fair taxes, perform WR. Woody Guthrie sang about WR practitioners: "Some men rob you with a six-gun, and some with a fountain pen". Invading armies redistribute the real-estate wealth of prior residents to their own people. Robin Hood took from the rich to give to the poor; robber-baron capitalists, lottery operators and tenement landlords reverse the process. Your fleas and ticks redistribute your bodily wealth amongst their needy incipient offspring. The list is endless.

Why Redistribute Wealth, Anyway?

Many motivations may be involved in WR. The most common rationales are:

1. Greed: I want more, so I'm taking it.
2. Need: I need more, so give it up.
3. Imperative: My voices/deity told me to.
4. Altruism: WR is an inherently Good Thing.
5. Public Policy: WR is a Social Necessity.

The Public Policy rationale, supported by Constitutional provisions for "the general Welfare", is sometimes labeled Social Engineering (SE). The SE term may also be flung at any socio-political-economic-ideological programs that gore one's particular ox(en). Public education is SE because it raises people from their divinely-assigned stations in life. Public assistance is SE because it eliminates the desperation of poverty as a motivation for hard work. Progressive taxation is SE because it discourages the hopeless poor from rising up and slaughtering the blood-sucking elites. Human cloning promises to be the ultimate SE, super-eugenics to produce perfect people. Et cetera.

What Are The Rules of the Wealth Redistribution Game?

To start playing the WR game, you need to determine a) that wealth is available for redistribution, b) that means are available for such redistribution, and c) that you have a role to play in the process. Having determined these, you may then proceed to play the game.

Real property: land, structures, etc; personal property; intellectual property; sweat labor; sweat equity; financial instruments: currency, stocks, bonds, promissory notes, deeds, etc; human property: chattel slaves, indentured servants, dependent relatives, etc; living necessities: food, drink, shelter, etc; artworks, craftworks, dreamworks; whatever else comes to mind.

• Provider: a source of wealth
• Recipient: a benefactor of redistribution
• Facilitator: a catalyst of transfer
• Commentator: a social mouthpiece

The role of Facilitator accomplishes the means for redistribution, may be divided into any of the following sub-roles, or others that you may devise:

• Legislator, to officially provide justification and means for transfers
• Adjudicator, to officially decide upon the merits and amounts of transfers
• Accountant, to tabulate the needs, availabilities and transferred amounts
• Enforcer, to ensure (by force or threat of force or punishment, as needed) that wealth transfers do indeed occur
• Defender, to ensure (by force or threat of force or punishment, as needed) that wealth transfers DO NOT occur

The roles of Facilitator and Commentator may be joined in the sub-role of Persuader, where for valuable consideration (a cut of the action) you use marketing / advertising / propaganda techniques to influence WR practices.

Should wealth and means be available (like, there's still somebody alive in your vicinity, including yourself), you should choose one or more roles from the above list, and/or devise some other relevant role(s). You may simultaneously occupy as many roles as you see fit: receiving from certain providers, providing for certain recipients, facilitating these or other transfers, and/or commentating on the rightness / wrongness of certain specific transfers or all transfers in general.

If you have chosen from the roles of Recipient, Facilitator or Commentator (or something similar) devise justifications for redistributing wealth. If you have chosen from the roles of Provider or Commentator (or something similar), devise justifications for resisting the redistribution. If you have chosen from the roles of Facilitator or Commentator, select the appropriate physical and/or logical tools / weapons to aid in your task; and if you have not also chosen from the roles of Provider or Recipient, determine how you can receive a portion of the wealth yourself.

MEANS - How To Redistribute Wealth Without Even Trying:

• Raise taxes (sales tax, V.A.T., income tax, payroll withholding, federal bank interest rates, import duties, inheritance taxes, etc.) to target one or more socio-economic groups -- expend the funds to directly / indirectly benefit other groups / individuals.
  
  
• Lower taxes (see above) on targeted groups; proceed apace.
  
  
• Allow commercial groups to combine to raise prices on goods and services, targeting specific groups, to benefit the combines.
  
  
• Force commercial groups to compete aggressively to provide the best goods and services at the lowest prices, benefiting all consumers -- who then buy more goods / services, enriching the Providers. Don't break the cycle of increasing prosperity.
  
  
• Decrease educational and occupational opportunities for certain social groups, so elites may benefit from their exploitation.
  
  
• Increase educational / occupational opportunities for all social groups, so that real prosperity increases for society in toto, although with proportionally less control by the elites.
  
  
• Engage in massive military buildups, spending (today's cash) and borrowing (tomorrow's cash) to impoverish the taxpayers and enrich the suppliers of military products and services.
  
  
• Decrease military spending, allowing funds that would otherwise have gone for never-used military systems to be instead spent on increasing the productivity of commercial / industrial enterprises, improving (inter)national infrastructure, providing for health & safety of the population & environment, benefiting everyone.
  
  
• Sell the nation / planet to ExtraTerrestrials and abscond with the funds.