If you support forced redistribution of wealth, you should support forced redistribution of blood

Redistribution means taking from some to give to others. Most of the federal budget is spent on redistribution in some form — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, housing assistance, unemployment benefits, and many other programs — but few of us stop to ask some basic questions about redistribution.

How much money should be redistributed from the wealthy to the poor? Is it a fixed number that depends on the needs of the poor, or is it a variable number that depends on the profits of the wealthy? What does it mean to be wealthy, high recent income or lifetime accumulated assets? What does it mean to be poor, low recent income or lifetime accumulated debt? How often should the redistribution take place? Once, to account for past injustices, or repeatedly, like clockwork? Most importantly, how can we objectively think about these questions without resorting to character accusations?

Few bother to ask these questions, let alone answer them. Those who support it, redistribution needs to be believed in and if you question it, there must be something wrong with you. Those who oppose redistribution simply view it as stealing, and asking these questions is akin to asking why mugging shouldn’t be tolerated; it’s just repugnant.

Let’s be a little abstract so that we can distance ourselves both from the guilt and the repugnance that quashes our natural curiosity. Let’s ask some basic questions.

One approach is to proceed by analogy. Start with your body. Just about everybody has extra blood. By all of the standard arguments for redistribution — need, excess wealth, fairness — blood should be redistributed. Along with your 1040, you should send the government a baggie of blood this week.

According to America’s Blood Centers, someone needs blood every two seconds. One in seven people entering a hospital will need blood. One pint of blood can save up to three lives. Here, the redistribution questions are easy: everybody who needs blood for medical reasons should get all they need, whenever they need it.

Only a small minority have the appropriate blood. Only 38 percent of the U.S. population is eligible to give it. And everybody in that blood-wealthy group can spare a little. The amount of blood to be redistributed depends only on the amount needed to save people, not on the amount the donors can spare.

Your blood type is not the result of hard work or ingenuity. Taking some of your blood, unlike taking some of your money, won’t affect your incentive to make more of it. Therefore, we could redistribute this repeatedly.

It is only fair that those who have better blood through no credit of their own and who could safely give some of it up, be forced to do so, to redistribute it to those who need blood through no fault of their own and whose lives could be saved.
Blood is better than money because politicians can’t even pocket any. Only  the intended recipients would want it.

Do you support forced redistribution of money? Do you support forced redistribution of blood? If your answers to the two questions are not the same, you have a problem on your hands.

Dr. Phil Maymin is an Assistant Professor of Finance and Risk Engineering at NYU-Polytechnic Institute. The views represented are his own.

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JMW  - Good point, but...   |2010-04-15 12:57:51 ... I wouldn't give them any ideas. Reply 0   0

Pricilla  - Bloody indeed,   |2010-04-15 16:24:02 Most of the federal budget is spent on illegal and immoral wars in which the blood of POOR innocent Iraqis and Afghanis is taken to profit the likes of the military industrial complex, the energy industry, the CIA drug dealers, and the central bankers (dollar hegemony). The next largest recipient of these illegal taxes are again the central bankers who charge us interest for their printed fiat. Social security, Medicare, and Medicaid(the illegal and forced security nets)are hidden in the domestic expenditures to make up most of the rest of the budget. It is obvious that the money is getting sucked upwards not downwards. Reply 2   0

Robert  - NYS-presume people want to donate organs   |2010-04-28 12:43:08 ALBANY, NY (AP) -- A New York state lawmaker wants his state to be the first in the nation to adopt laws that would presume people want to become organ donors when they die unless they say otherwise. Assemblyman Richard Brodsky said his bills would shorten lengthy waits for patients needing potentially lifesaving organ transplants. One would prevent distraught relatives from reversing a deceased organ donor's wishes. The second bill would presume everyone is an organ donor unless they specifically opt out. Brodsky said he wants to bring to America the notion of "presumed consent," in which hospitals would assume that people who die want their organs harvested unless they have formally said otherwise. Reply 0   0

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