Why Centralized Government Welfare is Intrusive on our Freedom and Destructive of Community Coheshion.

If we go back in our countries history to the beginning, just after the ink on the US Constitution was dry, the role of the federal government was not to be a caretaker of it’s people. In fact, the opposite was true: the government only existed and was sustainable based upon the care of the people (“We the people…”)

The altruistic role of the local community is subverted by the liberal agenda to define the role of centralized government as that of a caretaker of the masses. Ultimately, in the role of the caretaker of the people, the federal government steals the opportunity for individuals in a local community to congregate and cooperate among themselves to solve social problems. This federal government welfare agenda eliminates the binding of the community toward a cause of social welfare that is tailored to the needs of a particular community. The centralized welfare programs must assume that all people in need in every community have similar needs and that they are all worthy of assistance regardless of their personal choices or behavior. Local programs at the grass roots level allow for discrimination so that people are free to give their time and resources to others that they feel are deserving. This key element of local grass roots giving allows for the local communities to avoid enabling bad behavior. A community (and certainly the federal government) cannot sustain a program of care for a growing population of unproductive dependents who take more than they contribute to the collective. The result is, for productive people, to have their property taken at threat of guns and imprisonment, and to have that property given to some (and a growing number) of people in their communities who demonstrate selfish, unproductive, and community damaging behavior. This removes the chance of the citizens to care for those fellow citizens in need who are honorable and responsible to the community. In other words, our allowance of the liberal agenda to define the federal government as a caretaker of it’s people has depersonalized our society and has limited the ability of people to voluntarily take care of it’s people.

The weapon of the liberal agenda is to demonize any who would not support the re-allocation of resources from local communities to allow the central government the power to address the apparent ills of society. The administrative cost of sending hard earned resources (not to mention that they are resources taken from private citizens) to Washington to be re-distributed back into the local community is high. What the liberal leaders have done is hijacked the purpose and role of local grass roots cohesive community involvement in favor of the impersonal and disconnected centralized social welfare function. The consequence is limitation of the cohesive quality of community cooperation and the elimination of positive local discriminatory practices.

While I am sure there are those who could write a paper on the current state of organized Judeo-Christian religion and it’s failure, in most every denomination, to maintain and grow participation, one of the major external causes of this trend is the growing role of the federal government as the caretaker and social net for people in local communities. There are other groups in communities besides those that meet in churches and synagogues, that are also finding it difficult to recruit young people. Membership in local grass-roots community organizations aimed at addressing local social issues is diminished as more and more feel they do their part by paying their taxes and expect the central government to take care of these issues.

So we move toward a new paradigm where it is no longer the expectation that mature and citizens will take care of themselves. Instead we find that more and more want to look away from self responsibility and the discriminating requirements of neighbors and to look to a central figure who draws it’s power from the vote of the growing mass of immature and dependent citizens. The central figure draws support with the promise that he will coerce others into caring for any who chose something less than self responsibility. These individuals surrender their proxy, dignity and self respect to a captor disguised as a savior.

The economically viable citizen in the America of the modern liberal must, on the penalty of imprisonment, work several months of every year to care for persons he has never met and many of whom escape the moral responsibility of working for themselves and providing for their own material welfare (even though they are not occupationally disabled.) The foundations of social cooperation in communities across America are not understood by the modern liberal. The capacity for individual altruism by discrimination and choice manifested as charitable acts in a community are the foundation of sustainable systems of social cooperation. When this selective moral imperative of group survival is changed to be the product of a legally enforceable demand by the central government in exchange for votes and continued power, the foundation for the community social net is weakened and we are set on a destructive path.

“So you think …

“So you think that money is the root of all evil?” said Francisco d’Aconia. “Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

“When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor – your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?

“Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions – and you’ll learn that man’s mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

“But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made – before it can be looted or mooched – made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can’t consume more than he has produced.

“To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except by the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss – the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery – that you must offer them values, not wounds – that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best your money can find. And when men live by trade – with reason, not force, as their final arbiter – it is the best product that wins, the best performance, then man of best judgment and highest ability – and the degree of a man’s productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?

“But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality – the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

“Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants; money will not give him a code of values, if he’s evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he’s evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

“Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth – the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve that mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

“Money is your means of survival. The verdict which you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men’s vices or men’s stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment’s or a penny’s worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you’ll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?

“Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?

“Or did you say it’s the love of money that’s the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It’s the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is the loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money – and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.

“Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another – their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.

“But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride, or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich – will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt – and of his life, as he deserves.

“Then you will see the rise of the double standard – the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money – the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law – men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims – then money becomes its creators’ avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they’ve passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

“Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion – when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing – when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors – when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you – when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice – you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that it does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.

“Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it becomes, marked: ‘Account overdrawn.’

“When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, ‘Who is destroying the world?’ You are.

“You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it’s crumbling around you, while you’re damning its life-blood – money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men’s history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves – slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody’s mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers – as industrialists.

“To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money – and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man’s mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being – the self-made man – the American industrialist.

“If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose – because it contains all the others – the fact that they were the people who created the phrase ‘to make money’. No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity – to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted, or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words ‘to make money’ hold the essence of human morality.

“Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters’ continents. Now the looters’ credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide – as, I think, he will.

“Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns – or dollars. Take your choice – there is no other – and your time is running out.”

This is a quote from a character in the book Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.  Money (currency) is essential to the flow of income.  Our president has lit the beacon with his statement that “income differential” is the defining issue of our time.  But do we really understand what gives money value?  How can someone who is truly unproductive even come to hold money for exchange without causing devaluation?  This may sound harsh but read the quote and tell me what you think.

Minimum Wage – Part I

by Brian Boone

Different businesses entail a different level of risk.  A restaurant, for example, may require the owner to fund and make tenant improvements, enter into a long-term lease agreement to secure the physical premises and commit the time and expense to hire and train a core staff; and these commitments are required before the first entrée is served.  A restaurant owner can vary staffing and food ordering somewhat according to the volume of patrons and related sales, but the rent, the payments on the tenant improvement loan, the insurance, the payroll cost (and required benefits) for the chef, dishwasher, hostess, bartender, and an estimated level of supply and food inventory to insure quality and service are all fixed and have to be exceeded by sales, at a minimum for the venture to survive.  If the owner works in the restaurant as a manager, she must collect a base wage for her services as well if she is to pay her mortgage.  If a break even level of sales is not reached (a level that can cover all of these costs of essential resources) the owner will have to invest more capital (short-term) or will possibly have to shut the doors to patrons (long-term) and will suffer great loss of down payment capital and with liability to the landlord and bank for the tenant improvements.  Of course we see restaurants fail and close often.  This risk may differ from the risk of launching a new publication for local distribution.

In the example of the restaurant, it may be that the expected income to the owner assuming success, given the costs of resources, is sufficient to pay the owner a fair wage to compensate for the contribution of time and effort as well as additional income to provide a return on the investment of savings and to serviced the debt requirements compensate for the risk of borrowing.  Let’s assume that the government is proposing to impose a minimum wage (or wage increase) and that prior to the increase, the restaurant owner was able to attract an available supply of labor for dishwashing and table bussing at $6 per hour.  Let’s assume the government is proposing an increase to $12 per hour.  The restaurant owner may realize that the net profit he expects will no longer provide for a return on investment and will substantially increase the risk that she will even be able to draw a wage for herself that will allow her to pay her personal bills.  The owner will feel trapped in that the bank and the landlord, who rely on and “banked” on her success will still require payment.  The owner could try and raise the prices on the menu to offset the cost but, ultimately, the owner would likely cut her losses and would close the doors and might file for bankruptcy protection.  The restaurant shut-down would cost the Chef, the bartender, the hostess, the bussers, the servers, the dishwashers and the owner their jobs.

Many proponents of increasing minimum wage complain that an employee at the current level ($6 in the hypothetical example) cannot be self-supporting.  Is it important that any solicitation for labor in our economy provide sufficient compensation to allow an individual to be self-supporting?  What about the family where the wage of the dishwasher supplements the income from another household member?  Many proponents suggest that the higher minimum wage will put money in the pockets of consumers and that this will improve the economy.  If this is true, I am wondering why we would be so foolish as to stop at $12 per hour as a minimum; why not $50 per hour or $100 per hour or $1,000 per hour?  If your answer is that $50 is too high or is ridiculous then I ask you:  why is $12 the proper and reasonable amount?  Because risk profiles are different for different businesses, maybe the minimum wage should be different for different businesses?

There is one mechanism available that can effectively set minimum wages for businesses at unique and different levels:  the invisible hand of the free market that provides for the pricing of resources according to the free market bidding and competition for those resources.  If people are sitting with no-employment at all, the restaurant owner, may be able to attract qualified labor for dishwashing at a lower rate, but if there are higher rates paid by homebuilders for laborers to the point that there is a shortage of qualified dishwashers, the restaurant owner would have to raise the pay rate accordingly.  Opponents to the free-market method believe that there is some guy with a suit on in Washington (who, of course spoke to a guy with a very slick econometric simulation model in a spreadsheet) who can determine that some single rate works best.  Of course this “Washington suit” does not want the restaurant owner to shut the doors of the restaurant or for the car wash owner to close after he attempted to raise his rates to pay his laborers only to find that the restaurant owner (along with other employed and newly unemployed) has decided she has plenty of free-time to wash her own car, given the higher prices.

The neighbor may be willing to hire the boy down the street to mow his lawn at $6 but would mow it himself at the $12 rate thus removing critical supplemental income for a struggling family.  How can one minimum wage rate be optimum and effective for all businesses providing goods and services when each business is subject to different supply and demand dynamics?  If I am hungry and in a government funded shelter and I can earn $2 per hour to pass out marketing fliers to augment my need for public assistance, isn’t it better for me than not to work at all to provide something for myself?  If you set the minimum wage too high, the business owner may pass out the fliers herself or may choose a different media method for advertising her city bike tour business.  Then the resource of effort provided by the unemployed worker is lost as well as the chance at some level of self-sufficiency and self-respect.  If there is no unintended consequence of failed businesses and loss of available jobs, then why not raise the minimum wage to $25, $50, $100 or even $1,000 per hour.  The invisible hand of the free market is considered ineffective by many because there are some jobs that would be priced at such low rates, that the job would not completely lift the employee from poverty (without other family income , public assistance, or communal efforts.)  But the hand of the suit in Washington is also imperfect and inefficient because it eliminates the opportunity for citizens to even partially contribute to their families or to limit the need for public assistance by artificially raising the price of a resource thus eliminating jobs that would otherwise exist.

While a minimum wage is an idea that was born from noble aspirations, it serves to have the opposite effect than the one desired.  With a minimum wage, we will have more people without an opportunity to provide for themselves.  This unintended consequence is inevitable and cannot be ignored lest you agree then that $1,000 per hour or more would be an even better policy than $12 per hour.  Unfortunately with incredible appeal and political skill, the politician calling for a higher minimum wage (quite appealing to the voters) will find a way to deflect responsibility for the unintended consequences of the government meddling with the free market and will blame them on his opponent.

One might ask what minimum wage has to do with personal sovereignty and the cause of freedom?  Minimum wage interferes with the freedom of one to offer employment to another at a free market price and with the freedom of one to accept an offer of employment from another at a free market price.  This limitation on the free will of both sides of the transaction is argued to be justifiable given the intent of it’s policy without full regard for the practical impact of it’s policy.  The goal of causing hard working people to receive a higher wage is noble while the unintended result of causing people to be wholly unemployable and then, by necessity, dependent entirely upon those still employed, at or above the minimum, is counterproductive and contrary to the goal itself.

Tocqueville on the Role of Government

I was thinking about Tocqueville and the amazing impact his treatise about America had on me when I first read it in college and I thought I would re-acquaint myself with some of his writings given my belief and fear that the “pop culture” guided generation have grown now unwittingly to a tyrannous majority in our country.  Those in the majority appear to believe that it is self-evident that big government is good and that the role of big government it to take care of its people.  They believe that our government should take care of its people while demanding nothing in return from other than the “wealthy.”  They seem to be unwittingly gathering in force and growing exponentially.   Those same people appear to believe that there is no unfortunate and undesirable event or circumstance that cannot be obviated by new rules authored by the pen of a legislator.  I believe that this new generation of American has taken over voting results and that their hope is borne by a valuation of false promises and false premises of politicians who make those promises in exchange for their votes.  The assumptions of the vote pandering politicians: wealth exists regardless of the behavior and actions of citizens;  such wealth should be and can be simply redistributed without threatening its existence and availability;  volumes of proper rules and regulations (never mind the restrictions on individual freedoms) will ultimately insure a path to a utopian paradise.  It is amazing to me that Alexis de Tocqueville  (a Frenchman!) visited America so very long ago (well before the time of radio, television, the internet, social media and the power of pop culture) and could see the dangerous path that we would walk as a Democratic Republic threatened by the tyrannous majority and it’s popular opinions.

Below are some amazing Tocqueville quotes and passages that are even more powerful and meaningful in our present time of electronic media, where the majority or popular view will seemingly always carry the day in favor of any rigorous examination requiring meaningful thought.  Democracy in America is standard reading for college students but I have always been particularly impacted by the amazing wisdom and foresight of that treatise.

“Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom, socialism restricts it. Democracy attaches all possible value to each man; socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville

“The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville

“Americans are so enamored of equality, they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville

“We can state with conviction, therefore, that a man’s support for absolute government is in direct proportion to the contempt he feels for his country.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville

“everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure”
― Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

 

“Our contemporaries are constantly wracked by two warring passions: they feel the need to be led and the desire to remain free. Unable to destroy either of these contrary instincts, they seek to satisfy both at once. They imagine a single, omnipotent, tutelary power, but one that is elected by the citizens. They combine centralization with popular sovereignty. This gives them some respite. They console themselves for being treated as wards by imagining that they have chosen their own protectors. Each individual allows himself to be clapped in chains because that the other end of the chain is held not by a man or a class but by the people themselves.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville

 

“It is indeed difficult to imagine how men who have entirely renounced the habit of managing their own affairs could be successful in choosing those who ought to lead them. It is impossible to believe that a liberal, energetic, and wise government can ever emerge from the ballots of a nation of servants.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville

“Tyranny in democratic republics does not proceed in the same way, however. It ignores the body and goes straight for the soul. The master no longer says: You will think as I do or die. He says: You are free not to think as I do. You may keep your life, your property, and everything else. But from this day forth you shall be as a stranger among us. You will retain your civic privileges, but they will be of no use to you. For if you seek the votes of your fellow citizens, they will withhold them, and if you seek only their esteem, they will feign to refuse even that. You will remain among men, but you will forfeit your rights to humanity. When you approach your fellow creatures, they will shun you as one who is impure. And even those who believe in your innocence will abandon you, lest they, too, be shunned in turn. Go in peace, I will not take your life, but the life I leave you with is worse than death.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville

“What good does it do me, after all, if an ever-watchful authority keeps an eye out to ensure that my pleasures will be tranquil and races ahead of me to ward off all danger, sparing me the need even to think about such things, if that authority, even as it removes the smallest thorns from my path, is also absolute master of my liberty and my life; if it monopolizes vitality and existence to such a degree that when it languishes, everything around it must also languish; when it sleeps, everything must also sleep; and when it dies, everything must also perish?”

“There are some nations in Europe whose inhabitants think of themselves in a sense as colonists, indifferent to the fate of the place they live in. The greatest changes occur in their country without their cooperation. They are not even aware of precisely what has taken place. They suspect it; they have heard of the event by chance. More than that, they are unconcerned with the fortunes of their village, the safety of their streets, the fate of their church and its vestry. They think that such things have nothing to do with them, that they belong to a powerful stranger called “the government.” They enjoy these goods as tenants, without a sense of ownership, and never give a thought to how they might be improved. They are so divorced from their own interests that even when their own security and that of their children is finally compromised, they do not seek to avert the danger themselves but cross their arms and wait for the nation as a whole to come to their aid. Yet as utterly as they sacrifice their own free will, they are no fonder of obedience than anyone else. They submit, it is true, to the whims of a clerk, but no sooner is force removed than they are glad to defy the law as a defeated enemy. Thus one finds them ever wavering between servitude and license.”
When a nation has reached this point, it must either change its laws and mores or perish, for the well of public virtue has run dry: in such a place one no longer finds citizens but only subjects.”
― Alexis de Tocqueville

Tocqueville left us a tremendous gift.  As a Frenchman he was an objective researcher and observer.  He could see the power of public opinion and how it could be an almost invincible harnessed political power.

We proceed now it seems that with our new “fairness” model (authored by President Obama and his contemporaries) and the belief that we can ultimately conquer the un-pleasantries in the forces of nature and natural selection.   There is no problem too big and abstract that a new law cannot solve and there is no human struggle that cannot be extinguished by simple reallocation of our vast resources.  If we are smart and have a “fair” allocation of our nation’s wealth and resources we can rise above nature and insure that no fellow man will suffer, after all we are not animals!  We now seem to follow a belief that fairness dictates that our natural differences should not produce different results.  This new found call for “fairness” (the defining issue in President Obama’s presidency) suggests that we should ultimately all have equal results.  Why are we fooled into thinking that we can only be at our best when no one man struggles at the same time that one man has as luxury beyond his need?

What will come of us if this idea succeeds and if we are finally so “equal” that we are indistinguishable?    What will come of us if our growing body of laws and rules actually succeed in eliminating any danger or hardship from our lives (nor more guns, pressure cookers and not concern for want of food and shelter.)  Would that be a sustainable model?  That which does not kill you makes you stronger, right?  I am sorry to remind you but we will all die ultimately regardless of how much risk we attempt to eliminate from our lives.  Real strength and vitality is borne from the hardship that threatens the very life we attempt so feverishly to preserve, isn’t it?  We are now a culture and society where we, almost universally, buy the chance at hardship in a gymnasium in order to stay physically strong and buy subscription to challenging mind games to keep our mental abilities sharp.   Why, then,  do we think we are doing a fellow citizen a favor by favoring a government that will endeavor to eliminate hardship for all as long as any one has it economically better than another.  Every animal on the planet that survives is strong because of the very struggle that threatens to eliminate it and yet we would deprive our own kind of that important struggle and individual story in the name of “fairness.”

INCOME INEQUALITY, A TRUE REFLECTION OF FREEDOM

by Brian Boone

I have a highly valued relative who is a genealogy expert.  She can trace my family back to the earliest settlers from Europe.  My great, great, great grandfather, Andrew Jackson Myers, homesteaded property in Northwestern Kansas and was a Union Army soldier who fought in the battle of Allatoona in Sherman’s famous march to the sea.  My grandmother who recently died at the age of 94 in McCook, Nebraska, actually lived with Andrew Jackson Myers for a time when she was a child.

I used to sit and talk for hours to my grandmother Betty from Nebraska and her mother, Blanche, my great grandmother, about their early lives, struggles and their American dream.  Interestingly, they recalled that when they were young and poor (poor according to their standards at the time and compared to some of their neighbors) they were still happy to be living in America and to have the chance to continue to face their own independent struggle and challenge to improve their lives.  My Grandmother was a part of what we called “the greatest generation.”

Isn’t it important to look back where we came from and to hear the stories of people that came before us?  After all, isn’t our history and past a part of the very foundation from which we build and grow as a nation?  I know that this Myers and Carpenter line of my family struggled to provide the basic necessities in early America.  I believe this was the case for many early settlers.  There are more stories like this than there are stories of plantation owners that used slave labor to raise their stake in the claim of wealth and income in the southern colonies.  In fact, my ancestor Myers risked his life and many others like him, coming from humble circumstances, died fighting to end slavery and preserve the union.

America did not have today’s great social safety net and public assistance programs in the 1800’s when my Grandpa Myers lived.  Many died young as they struggled to survive while some barely survived and other’s prospered economically.  And yet people still came to America to set down roots full of hope and promise and were happy to struggle if it meant they would be free to practice their chosen faith and to keep what they earned.  Some prospered more than others but each worked to try and improve their lives and the lives of their children.  It was the goal, I believe, of each family to work to provide any advantage they could for the next generation in the age old human struggle for scarce resources.  The people of that time, whether or not they believed it to be the proper role of government, did not expect their government to take care of them.  What they did expect is freedom to live their lives as they chose and understood that, as such, they had to accept the results born from their own behavior, decisions and fortune even if the neighbor had more success.

Our honorable President has stated that “income differential” is the defining issue of our time.  I am very well educated and credentialed and yet I still do not understand exactly how this issue is truly defined and exactly why this is a big problem for America.  I do not think our leaders have made this clear.  I understand the issue in the abstract and I certainly understand the political genius of President Obama placing this issue on his calling card (for most all American’s there are others who have more wealth and income.)  But if this is the defining issue of our time, isn’t it important for the terms in this discussion to be very clearly defined?

I understand that our President points to what is referred to as an income gap where wealth and annual income are concentrated and “skewed” with 1% of the American people.  The idea is that we need to close this gap and that we need to enact policies that close this gap.  I would like President Obama to define the exact measure, metric and standard that will cause us to conclude we are finally successful?  What is the end game?  Will we not rest and leave the results to the free market until income and wealth are equal for all Americans?  If this is not the end game of new policies, then exactly what will the distribution of annual income experience and wealth look like when we can all breathe a sigh of relief and realize that we have met our goals?

Politicians throw around terms like “wealthy”, “rich”, “poor”, and “living in poverty.”  If “income differential or wealth differential” is the defining moment of our time should these terms be used so loosely by our public servants, our leaders in Sacramento and Washington?  These terms certainly stir our emotions and provide, as such, powerful political rhetoric.  In fact, the terms wealth and income are used interchangeably by many politicians and yet my degrees, credentials, and experience tell me that income and wealth are two very distinct things and that the distinction is important.  This distinction is evidently not important in the political arena.

How can we produce another generation that can earn the distinction of being referred to as the greatest generation?  What if the key determinants for evolution to greatness for my Grandmother’s generation were hardship, struggle and self-relience?  What will future generations look like that are a product of the “new” paradigm that the proper role of government is to take care of it’s people?  Is the strongest tree in the forest the one that depends on stakes to stay rooted or is it the one with the strongest trunk born from its exposure to the elements and its struggle to survive?

Currency allows us to trade and acquire goods and services to meet our needs, to provide for security reserves and possibly luxury.  But no amount of money given to a citizen can afford them, the self-respect, self-satisfaction, strength, and the kind of happiness my Grandmother experienced.  We will all die someday, so preservation of a heartbeat is ultimately a futile goal and a relatively low bar to set for our people.  We need to measure our people and each of their lifetimes, not by the money left behind, but by the extent to which they achieve independence, enjoy the challenge of playing the hand they are dealt, accept the outcome with honor, and appreciate what it truly meant to be free.  Income differential in America is the clearest evidence of true freedom at play.  We should see it as a great symbol of American freedom.  The greatest generation understood freedom to be America’s greatest treasure.  Now, I fear, we want to create a new generation that cannot take ownership of their own lives and that will be dependent wards of the state, shackled to a false promise of purpose and satisfaction.