If real wages weren't stagnant for the past generation, and capital gains taxed at a ludicrously low level,there'd be no need for redistribution. So, once again again, start the analysis at the beginning, please.
The whole thing is an invitation to return to the economic theory that got us here in the first place. Ultimately, this is a market failure -- anti-competitive forces conspired to remove freedoms from market participants, in this case collective bargaining. Adam Smith was vociferous about the need to control those anti-competitive forces. He was not a market fundamentalist in the way that people who cite him today are. Those people rarely venture beyond a few chapters of his work. They ignore the inconvenient ones.
The whole thing is an invitation to return to the economic theory that got us here in the first place. Ultimately, this is a market failure -- anti-competitive forces conspired to remove freedoms from market participants, in this case collective bargaining. Adam Smith was vociferous about the need to control those anti-competitive forces. He was not a market fundamentalist in the way that people who cite him today are. Those people rarely venture beyond a few chapters of his work. They ignore the inconvenient ones.
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