“Tax the rich, feed the poor
Til there are no rich no more?”
--- Ten Years After
I’m doing song lyrics again. Old songs. Songs from my
impressionable youth. Songs from when we knew we could change the world and
make it a better place for everyone.
I’m old, and one of the symptoms of this disease is the cold
realization that the world is not going to be a better place for everyone. The
other is the obsession with listening to the music that once floated my heart.
It’s kinda like remembering hip hugger bell bottom jeans, except that particular
vision floated something else, way back then. I just like the old music, for it
brings back feelings of that time of false hope.
I heard this song on the satellite radio while driving to
the clinic yesterday. It tasted rather bitter, particularly in light of who
some folks just re-elected to run the country for the next four years. So I
looked up the lyrics on line, and the site I found suggested the question mark
located at the end of that lyric. I wondered if the band had a question mark
located there way back when.
Was this a question about the wisdom of taxing the rich into
oblivion? I couldn’t tell from the radio if that’s what the band intended, or
if they were actually making a different statement that didn’t include a question
mark and didn’t bode well for the rich. Many of us back then had little
sympathy for the rich, and these days it is up for discussion yet again.
Certainly it doesn’t seem as if the President and his impassioned boosters in The
Media have any sympathy for the rich. More on that later if I can keep that
thought in this old mind for that long.
“Maybe I’ll be there to shake your hand
Maybe I’ll be there to share the land
That they’ll be giving away
When we all live together.”
---The Guess Who
No question mark this time, from a song about the same age
old. Clearly these lyrics suggested the upcoming better world that would be
characterized by some mass redistribution of the available land. The Sixties
version of 40 acres and a mule. Everybody would have a place to raise a family,
with home grown veges and home grown dope, and happiness would swell the hearts
of all. And when the next generation came along, they’d be giving them land
too, and the next and the next. Until….
Wait a minute…
What were they gonna do when they ran out of land? Land is a
finite quantity, and as any real estate speculator knows, they’re not making
any more. So if they’ll be giving it away in any sustainable way, they will
have to take some land from that guy over there and give it to this one over
here. So I guess that guy over there must be rich. That’s how this works,
right?
And who are these “they” folks who will be giving away the
land? I suppose it could be the rich who have all the land so the others don’t.
They might give it away. You know, like all those movie stars who have all
those millions who think more people need government handouts, so those rich
movie stars all give up all their own money first to set the example. Yeah,
like that.
So instead I guess” they” will be taking the land away from
the folks “they” gave it to a few paragraphs back, to give it to somebody else.
That will make those folks who had 40 acres and a mule real happy as they raise
their families and grow their dope on somewhat less land, but at least these
citizens will have the satisfaction of watching their land that they’ve worked
for those generations going to some
folks who didn’t.
So if it won’t be the rich giving away their land, who is “they”?
Raise your hands if you think it will be some government. Very good, children.
And who can tell me how the government will do this without really annoying the
folks with the 40 acres? Right!!! They don’t have to make those people happy,
because the government can do whatever it wants. Thank goodness we have a
government to make the other people happy.
Now, this next bit is a little long, but it leads to a
point, so pour another cup of coffee and let’s go for a ride.
My friend and I were unrepentant liberals 40 years ago. Those
were fun times but with the passage of years we drifted onto different paths. I
became a small business owner and had to deal with employees, stupid silly
government rules, and taxes. He became a mover and shaker in the union and he
had to deal with bosses, stupid silly rules, and the shift to a world where
unions became the problem, rather than an answer to the problem. We had the
occasional difference of opinion, but remained friends, albeit polite friends
who didn’t discuss certain things.
We met up again recently, and he told this story:
Last year he visited India, and passed through Singapore
coming and going. I listened intently, for even though Singapore is a city and
I don’t do cities, this story was interesting.
Singapore is not suffering a recession right now. Business
is good and the people are making money and the government isn’t yet running
out of money, so that place is an anomaly right now.
The city is clean, the buildings new, and order is
everything. Singapore is doing so well that people wander in from Malaysia
looking for the good paying jobs. And many are thus employed.
The Malaysians who do not find work are eventually rounded
up, sent to camps for food, shower, clothing, and then shipped back to Malaysia
at state expense. And they are given enough money to keep them on Malaysian
terms for 6 months. What a benevolent government! And no pesky Malaysians are wandering
the streets doing the pesky things folks do when they cannot find work.
My friend says there are no homeless people camped under
bridges in Singapore, for the government rounds this lot up too and funds
housingfoodclothingetc for them.
Apparently, the old folks don’t want to be rounded up, for they have pride, so
the government cons them, telling them it built that housing especially for
them, and that makes it OK. Pride, it would appear, limits the number of folks
living off the government to a reasonable level, unlike what we all know would
happen here.
And the city is clean. Perhaps you’ve heard, but if not here
is the warning….do not take bubble gum to Singapore, for this is a serious crime
in this city. Bubble gum makes a city dirty. You get caught with gum and the
punishment is caning. That’s where they take a stout stick and they whack you
on the bare back a few dozen times until you are bleeding and scarred. Why do
they do this? Presumably because it’s mostly young folks who might do bubble
gum, and hanging them by the neck until dead or standing them in front of seven
guys with rifles might not look very good. But you make their city dirty and they
will get you.
The fine for not flushing a public toilet….$230.00. That’s
harsh, but if you ask how they would ever know you didn’t flush, they will
assure you that they are watching. Watching.
They are watching public toilets. They are watching for
bubble gum. They are watching for littering. Vagrancy. Homelessness. A bunch of
things. Whatever “they” want to watch.
Now, this is my friend’s observation, not mine. And he is
still the avowed liberal, so he likes when government is running things. He
thinks government should.
But now he says the city of Singapore appears nice, nearly a
utopian world, and the people are well cared for, but for all this there is a
price. “They” keep it their way because the government is totalitarian.
BINGO!
This is only my conclusion, but it seems that the folks in
government, any government, are forever doing things to the people in the guise
of doing things for the people. Totalitarian rule is one way to do government,
and certainly a popular version over all of history, but it is what it is.
The guy the people just re-elected over here says he wants
to do things for the people by taxing the rich to feed the poor. Some who work
at trying to get rich might object, but that’s only because there is something
terribly wrong with them. Selfish bastards. Ambition only hurts the country. But
the Prez can fix that.
The Prez will take the land from one to give to another,
claiming to be fixing things. He garnered support for this notion, and we the
people re-elected him and his minions so they get to stay in charge, and thus
they get power and they become rich, while they make others less rich and less
powerful, and the rest of us get 40 acres which becomes 20 which becomes ten.
“The trouble with socialism is that eventually you run out
of other people’s money.”
---Margaret Thatcher
Eventually every over-reaching government runs out of money,
and then they fail to hold to their promises, leaving the folks who have become
utterly dependent upon these gifts drifting
and vulnerable. But if anyone objects, they get to eventually meet that
totalitarian part. That’s the plan, ya know. We had one of the few governments
in the history of things that answered to the people. The plan is to change that.
Now, if those other folks had been elected, they might be
helping us by forcing their corruption of religion and its oppression upon us,
and then they would become rich and powerful, and that guy we re-elected wouldn’t.
And guess what… if we were to object, here comes the totalitarian part again. There
is a common theme here.
Government always grows. People running government always grow
rich and powerful, at the expense of everyone else. Government always
eventually becomes totalitarian, so the rich and powerful running government
can remain rich and powerful and running government. People who want to be in
government will tell us they are there to help the people, but …ah no. They
ain’t. They be helpin’ themselves to rich and powerful. And if the people
object…well, governments hit harder than the people.
When we ask the government to fix things we should fix
ourselves, government grows larger and more powerful. And people will lie like
crazy so we will be silly enough to put them into power. And to keep themselves in power. The more we
ask government to fix, the sooner we turn control of our lives over to
government.
Some people voted to re-elect that guy because he promised
to help, and to tax the rich to feed the poor and to give away the land when we
all live together. And although deep down they all knew he lied, they voted for
him. And instead the people will get nothing but the pleasure of watching the
guy become rich and powerful.
Now the other side offered much of the same, but perhaps a
little less and maybe not so fast. But they brought along the other extreme, an
oppressive religion to do their dirty work for them, and even the stupid saw
the harm in this, so they chose to re-elect the guy who promised only
government control. Or they didn’t vote at all, because there no longer was a
vote that made any sense at all.
We the people are in an inexplicable rush to turn our lives
over to the government, to see if we like totalitarian rule, and we were
willing to drink the lemonade.
I wish us luck. We will need that. Jefferson warned about
this. He suggested that government always trends toward oppression. That’s why
he wanted that clever bunch of ten amendments. He wanted rules to protect the
people from their own government. So he suggested we don’t have government
religion, and he thought we all should be armed to keep government in check.
This election offered government religion or the guy who promises a loss of
freedom of arms. We, the people, are so freaking stupid to let it get to this,
that we deserve to lose our freedom. And sadly, we will.
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