I’ve heard and read a great deal about the redistribution of wealth being initiated by the Obama administration and the democrats in general. Supposedly, the policy is intended to take money from the rich and give it to the poor… like Robin Hood. I really don’t have much of a problem with that. I think the rich are too rich in the U.S. and the poor and middle class (whatever that is nowadays) are too poor.
What bothers me is that the redistribution of wealth that’s actually occurring in the U.S. is moving money from the moral to the immoral, from taxpayers to tax dodgers, from the industrious to corporations to bloated government to the indolent. It’s bipartisan, so Obama and his ilk are not solely to blame, and it’s not limited to the two major political parties. The root problem is one of morality, ethics. Our country has lost its moral compass. William Bennett is right.
I began to realize this when I was working on a couple books with Ralph R. Roberts when the real estate bubble burst. We were writing Foreclosure Self-Defense For Dummies, Protect Yourself from Real Estate and Mortgage Fraud, and numerous articles exposing the corruption in the lending industry leading up to the mortgage meltdown. Ralph was of the mind that educating borrowers, tightening lending laws, and putting a few more checks and balances in the loan application and approval process would be the best long-term fixes. He didn’t convince me. Plenty of legislation was already in place, but it was no match for human nature. In the absence of a moral compass, all the laws in the world cannot prevent corruption. Laws must be written on the hearts of people.
This is exactly why current efforts to save the economy and redistribute wealth from rich to poor are destined to fail. Throwing money at a problem in a society in which greed and corruption are rampant simply moves the money from the law-abiding taxpayers to cash-grabbing crooks and unethical opportunists– people who have no moral sensibility and are focused solely on their own physical comfort and self-interests. They do not care about their fellow human beings or the health and well being of the country. They are parasites who, left unchecked, ultimately kill their host.
We need a leader in this country who places morality first, and we all need to honestly examine our own motivations and the long-term effects our choices have on others and on our country as a whole. The absence of moral character is at the root of our current problems, and I don’t hear anyone on the Capitol Hill addressing it.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
I wholeheartedly agree that the problem is bipartisan in cause. Where I disagree is that the country has “lost” it’s moral compass. This implies that the country formerly had a moral compass, whereas a close and objective study of history reveals this to not be the case.
It’s easy to point to the indolent and believe that they are taking our money, with the help of the government. A deeper analysis shows that the majority America’s tax money goes to feeding the beast: the war machine that runs the show and drains our wealth and returns us NOTHING but bad karma and the hatred of the families of those who are slaughtered all so some fat cat military contractor can make obscene amounts of money while the average taxpayer slides into poverty. Pentagon and secret CIA budgets are surely the work of the devil. That’s where our money goes.
Are the indolent lazy and greedy? yes. is their standard of living lower than the non-indolent, for the most part, YES.
The bad guys want you looking down for culprits and not up, it’s not an accident.