Governments should value economic equality before prosperity

It's been lots of fun. In this round I will summarize the key issues in the debate. Ruling eliteAs should be fairly obvious, a society with an "elite" is the very opposite of an "equal" society by definition, but as I've already pointed out, entirely conductive to prosperity. My opponent didn't respond to that part. My opponent's fallacy is in the point he labels four - the requirement of a ruling elite to carry out those policies. You don't need an elite to monitor giving everybody equal access to the courts. You don't need an elite to implement progressive taxes. You don't need an elite for minimising unemployment. These policies are being enacted in states all around the globe without the establishment of ruling elites or distribution councils. Why? Because these are all objective rules - there is no subjective element that an elite would be required for. Furthermore, the fact that members of Soviet Russia's (or Mao's China's, or North Korea's) inner party do not have a standard of living equal to everybody else shows that they are far from being committed to equality. I agree that valuing economic equality doesn't always mean it results, but the same is true of prosperity - to err is human. Free marketsMy opponent claims I can't explain Hong Kong or Singapore. Singapore is a country that has historically had high equality, with a Gini coefficient about 0.2 below the world average, but it used to be about 0.4 below the world average (which would make it among the most equal societies in the world had it not changed) (. http://tinyurl.com...). About 40 years ago the government began to aim for prosperity, and unsurprisingly poverty has increased massively since then. A recent government report said "Evidence from economic research indicates that income inequality can have profound ill effects. .. It creates price distortion which can push low income families into poverty. .. Thus inequity can rob Singapore of the very factors – law and order and efficiency, which placed Singapore at the helm of the globalized world. " (. http://tinyurl.com...).But there's something I want to say about Hong Kong also, which is a new example con has brought up. When Russia embarked on their experiment it lasted over 75 years before falling apart. Germany's experiment fell apart early because they were proud of the inequality they were creating, but it never fell apart on its own, and even became more and more productive when all the factories were being blown up (. http://tinyurl.com...). Henry Ford is so well-regarded in America today because the experiment worked long enough for thousands of cars to be produced, making the automobile affordable (at the time a very remarkable feat). So creating a caste system of "haves" and "have nots" certainly does work for a while - but eventually it all falls to pieces. Hong Kong has fallen to pieces twice already - after the 1998 Asian financial crisis and after the SARS outbreak. They lasted a mere 25 years. What did Hong Kong then do? They ENDED their prosperity experiment (. http://tinyurl.com...)! The Hong Kong we know today has, for the past decade, been moving further and further away from free markets - and their economy has been doing better than ever! I've proven time and time again, both by empirical example and by economic analysis that unregulated free markets don't work. You need REGULATED free markets. These ensure equality, and that ensures prosperity. Effects of regulationI agreed that the minimum wage usually causes a short-term increase in unemployment, but I provided economic analysis in round two that in the long-term, countries with a high minimum wage are better off. This analysis has never been refuted - only the examples I used to support it. I talked about Luxembourg; my opponent constantly reiterates that it's their attractive industries. Many countries have attractive industries - but there's a reason they're not as rich as Luxembourg. I've said it many times before - it's because they believe in equality and have a high minimum wage, as well as a healthy unemployment benefit. I also talked about the Netherlands, and my opponent talked about their crisis of the early 80s. This is because the government enacted the right policy in the wrong way. For instance, they raised the minimum wage beyond an equitable level for everybody that worked. That's not conductive to economic equality, because it's assuming the whole economy is measured in monetary terms. It's not; it's measured in standard of living. Workers got a comparatively worse standard of living than those on benefits, and the economy collapsed. Since then the Dutch have been working to equalise their economy the proper way, and it's worked really well. The notion that the Netherlands is falling apart comes from a dated OECD study that agreed with me that the Dutch economy was "strengthening", although like all European nations, it faced challenges after the recent recession. Today the Netherlands have low inflation, low unemployment and well-above-average economic growth (. http://tinyurl.com...).He also quickly mentioned the US, which I rebutted fully, and Sweden, which he has already proven didn't aim for equality, to which I agreed. Poverty/InvestmentThis is the most important issue in our debate - does investment create or reduce poverty. We both agree it creates economic growth (though I've argued consumer spending can have the same effect). The basic principle is that money doesn't magically appear - one person having more means that another has less. I agree with my opponent that production (as opposed to money) is not a zero-sum game, but for that to support my opponent's contention, that would be supposing that if I invest in a company, then that production will benefit everybody. In a free market there is every incentive on the wealthy to invest only in companies that benefit themselves. Why invest in developing low-cost housing for the poor - that doesn't generate a return, nor does it help the investor in any other way! But investing in private helicopters - now that's a wise investment, because it not only generates a return, but it benefits me because I buy private helicopters. What my opponent is advocating is called "trickle-down economics" - if you make the rich richer, you'll make the poor richer too, and get them out of poverty. It's no coincidence that in every one of the prosperity-nations we looked at the opposite happened. Making the rich richer makes the poor poorer because they have less control over how resources are allocated, and have less political influence. This holds true even if production increases - it will be the rich who get any marginal production, not the poor, because the rich own the factories and, for the simple reason of greed, have absolutely no incentive to raise wages in a free market. As New Zealand politician Damian O'Conner said, trickle-down economics is when the rich piss on the poor. What's the alternative? Equality. Con frequently says that's just making everybody poor. The reality is that nations high in equality do not have high rates of poverty, as I've demonstrated in many examples. The reality is that equality creates the incentives for massive long-run improvements in real purchasing power, as I've demonstrated in my analysis. And the reality is that aiming for prosperity has made everyone poor very frequently - except, always, for a small ruling elite. That's why Occupy happened. Wealth doesn't come from redistribution - but wealth isn't sustainable if the economy is controlled by a small, greedy, corrupt minority. Governments should, and must, do everything in their power to protect their people against this horrible, but very real, possibility. It's happened before. It will happen again. There is one thing my opponent and I have a consensus on - we must learn from the mistakes of the past. The resolution is affirmed.