How many people do you know that, if given a large lottery win, would still keep their job and do the best they can to please their boss and company they work for? Approximately none!

In general, the more of a person’s life is guaranteed by someone else, the less incentive that person has to earn and be productive. After all, if some or all of your needs are taken care of, and if someone else picks up the tab whenever something goes wrong, why would you worry about such minor details as work ethic, productivity, financial responsibility and family obligations?

I’m sure that many socialists, especially union people, would be thrilled if workers could get away with working less and being much less productive. However, they’d also be turning a blind eye on where all the money to fund their more leisurely lifestyles really comes from, and who really ends up paying for it all.

The usual socialist selling point is that the rich will pay for it all. However, even if the socialists are capable of keeping the promise of raising taxes only on the rich, which they never do because there isn’t enough money in it for them, socialist life guarantees, such as health care, child care, education, retirement benefits, etc., mean less productivity.

And less productivity always leads to the following:

1. Slower economic growth and technological development, which hurts the poor and middle class much more than it does the rich.
2. Lower wages as employers cannot pay employees more than their productive worth. And if wages are artificially kept high by government and union mandates then we get …
3. … higher prices.

As you can see, you will be paying for it, I’ll be paying for it and so will everybody else! It’s never just the “rich.”

A decrease in productivity also necessarily means a smaller economic pie for the government to tax.