“It is less important to redistribute wealth than it is to redistribute opportunity.” Arthur Vandenberg
This quote is similar to the fishing quote, do you give someone a fish or do you teach them how to fish? Redistributing wealth is fine and would provide immediate relief to many people, but only temporary relief. It is much more important to ensure everyone gets the same opportunity to accumulate wealth. As with the fish, by giving people a fish today, you fix their hunger problem for now, but tomorrow, they will be hungry again. If you give them an equal opportunity to gather wealth, over time, wealth will end up being distributed evenly on its own.
By giving everyone the opportunity to acquire wealth, they will be able to have money now, and in the future. If you distribute the wealth by giving everyone money, you will have to keep giving them money each time they’ve spent what you gave them.
What’s also inferred by distributing wealth rather than opportunity, is that people would become dependent on you, or the government, the rest of their lives to keep doing it. With opportunity, people become self reliant, and you, the government, become irrelevant in controlling who becomes wealthy.
Omar M. Kiam 