On the consequences of total expropriation

[writerspleasure.livejournal.com]

Here’s some interesting data from the Fed.

Non-seasonally-adjusted, M1 for Nov 2011 is $2.1491trillion. M2 is $9.6419trillion. - http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h6/hist/h6hist1.txt

If we completely liquidated all cash holdings of “the rich” and everyone else through 100% confiscation and redistributed it absolutely equally to an approximate U.S. population of 312,000,000, each person would have a little under $7,000. And the cost of this would be the complete decimation of the U.S. economy. M1 and M2 would be just about identical, financial structures would collapse, and at least for a while we’d be a barter society with starvation. And certainly no replacement supplies or MRI machines for hospitals under Obamacare and EMTALA.

This is why income inequality is not a problem, because income equality would be a disaster. And there’s no government-determined right level of inequality. When you have government figuring out winners and losers, you get Solyndra (have you looked into their actual tech? it was insane!) and the Chevy Volt. And the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific in the 19th C.

( I don’t try to calculate a distribution of physical assets in the U.S. because their value would collapse with decimation of the economy. )

Worldwide confiscation and distribution would be even worse, and the values of everything would become non-calculable. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Hayek .

P.S. Here’s something awful from the Fed link above: In Jan 1959, M1 was $138.9billion and M2 was $286.6billion. What a horrible adulteration!