The history of the 20th century is full of examples of countries that set out to redistribute wealth and ended up redistributing poverty. The communist nations were a classic example, but by no means the only example.
In theory, confiscating the wealth of the more successful people ought to make the rest of the society more prosperous. But when the Soviet Union confiscated the wealth of successful farmers, food became scarce. As many people died of starvation under Stalin in the 1930s as died in Hitler's Holocaust in the 1940s. [Professor Sowell is referring to the forced collectivization of the Ukraine. If you want to inform yourself of the horrors thereof, I recommend Robert Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine, Oxford UP, 1986.]
How can that be? It is not complicated. You can only confiscate the wealth that exists at a given moment. You cannot confiscate future wealth -- and that future wealth is less likely to be produced when people see that it is going to be confiscated. Farmers in the Soviet Union cut back on how much time and effort they invested in growing their crops, when they realized that the government was going to take a big part of the harvest. They slaughtered and ate young farm animals that they would normally keep tending and feeding while raising them to maturity.
Sowell is right of course. People typically do not allow themselves to be jerked around. If California is not business-friendly, business people will move to states like Texas, and the once 'Golden State' will sink deeper into the mire. (Bill Bennett in a recent speech referred to California as the "The Lindsay Lohan of states.") If you tax me at 100% for any amount earned above $100,000, I will arrange things so that my taxable income will be less than that amount. It is just human nature to resist being screwed.
The current debate about redistribution on shows like the O'Reilly Factor is close to moronic. O'Reilly talks as if Obama is for redistribution while Romney is not. But redistribution has been with us for a long time in the form of a progressive income tax code, and that is not going away any time soon. (And I am not even convinced that it should.) So the issue is not redistribution versus no redistribution. The issue is is whether we are going to have more of it, or less of it, or reduce the rate of its increase.
Under Obama we will most assuredly have more of it, a lot more. This will depress the economy, the national debt will increase even more, and we will be on the way to financial ruin.
Anyone who votes for the fiscally irresponsible Obama is a fool who does not understand his own long-term best self-interest. And anyone who thinks that it doesn't matter who is in the White House is also a fool, despite the fact that Romney is a milque-toast and a wimp.
Never forget: politics is always about the lesser of evils. Better a milque-toast and wimpy businessman who understands how the economy works than a incompetent leftist who doesn't.
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