When the "top 1%" consume too much of our thoughts

 


I hear a lot of people complaining about the top “1%” of the wealthiest people. Common folks like us sneer as we gripe about how unfair it is that those people control so much of the world’s wealth. Somehow this wealth makes them bad people. “Let’s just hate them” seems to be the consensus.

What if we all, each of us who can read this page today, are actually the world’s richest people? Comparatively speaking, if you have a toilet in your house, you are way above average. If you have electricity, running water, a cellphone and an automobile, you are grossly wealthy by comparison to billions of people. That’s billions with a B, and you are probably in the top 10% of the bracket of what we call wealthy by living conditions and standards. Not too shabby.

Who really cares about the rich, though. They have their own little world and we have ours, right? Well, again, we are all wealthy in this country. Even if you only make $10,000 a year you are wealthier than over half the world’s population. If you earn $100,000 a year you are in the lower tier of the top 7-9%. If you make between $10,000 and the $100,000 mark, you are in the top 25%. Again, not too shabby.

It’s really unhealthy to worry about what the “rich” people have, when we have so much, all of us. And by the way, our community reaps the rewards of several philanthropists who generously contribute to this region. Most of the wealthy people you think about have worked hard to get where they are. They put in the hours of toil, they made sacrifices the common person is unwilling to make to get where they are, and a healthy portion of them give back.

Why is it unhealthy to worry and complain about the “rich” people? Yes, it’s harder to count your own blessings when you are busy tallying up what your neighbor has, but there’s more. Envy, minimally, rots the core of your soul. If it pains you to see other people experience good fortune, you are guaranteed to be the most sorrowful, unhappiest person in the world. People who succumb to envy are miserable and extremely sad. But it gets worse.

The Bible warns the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil. The Bible doesn’t say possessing money is evil. You know what is evil? Envy. It’s one of the works of the flesh. According to Galatians Chapter 5, people who are envious cannot inherit the Kingdom. It’s that serious.

Paul tells us we should be content with some bare minimums in life — he never said be contentious over what others have. And, Paul, just like Jesus before him, was a recipient of the blessings from wealthy donors whose generosity and contributions funded their ministries.

If you are worried about the souls of the top 1%, pray for them. It is hard to depend on God and trust God when you are that wealthy. I’m sure few people of that status can stay grounded. If you find yourself hating them because of what they have, pray for your own self. Your own soul is most likely in jeopardy if you hate them or envy them for what they have. And please remember how blessed you truly are.

This post was published originally in this link in the Kingsport Times News: Remember how blessed you truly are | Faith | timesnews.net

Here's why we won't see a cashless society

Everyone seems worried our government, and the rest of the world, is subversively guiding us, forcing us, driving us like cattle to a slaughterhouse, towards a cashless society.  I'm confident this won't happen, and here are the two reasons:

#1. Every government uses slush-funds for covert operations, and they don't want to leave a paper/electronic trail.  Presidents, the CIA, you name it, they need untraceable cash to carry out all of their actions that pay for secrete deals and actions -- far beyond what we dream up with our conspiracy theories.

#2. More importantly, a cashless society will spur people to a better, fairer economic system which would be nearly impossible to tax, that being the barter system.   You will see more and more people bartering and trading in a cashless society, and it's hard for the government to take their share when there is no currency being exchanged.  

Don't worry about the lack of change next time you go through the drive thru, now you have my two cents...  

The logjam of socialism

I don't agree with every tenant of capitalism, it's certainly not perfect.  But tonight it finally clicked for me, it finally hit me, I now see the major flaw within the mindset of socialism.  To me, the perfect metaphor for socialism's worldview is the hourglass.

From what I can tell, socialists want to reverse, in their thinking, the flow of wealth in our society.  Bernie's ads use a pyramid to show the unequal distribution of wealth, but in my mind the better metaphor for a socialist is the hourglass.  So, if the top 1% is hoarding the majority of our wealth, what we need to do is to reverse the flow, let it trickle back down into the masses, and share the wealth.  Sounds good to me, except it is illogical.

Bernie Sanders, for example, states the Walton family of Walmart is wealthier than the bottom 40% of all of America combined.  Fact checkers confirm this shocking statistic.  But does this statistic prove Walmart is responsible for this imbalance, or that capitalism for that matter is evil?   All this proves is, Walmart has a huge base of shoppers, most of whom are bargain shoppers looking for cheaper goods/prices than the store down the road, and these shoppers freely funnel their money into the Walton family's pockets.

Since no one was held hostage or forbidden to shop elsewhere, and since the non-Neiman Marcus non-Saks Fifth Ave shoppers have freely volunteered to shop at Walmart, well you get the point.  By the way, economists say if you have $10 to your name and no debt, you are wealthier than 25% of all Americans...

Back to the hourglass and the illogical notion of reversing the flow of wealth in our society.  For Sanders to be right, there would have to be more cash flowing into the system to keep on passing it out to the rest of us.  This might be called inflation for all I know?  But for the socialist's plans to work out, you need an endless supply of wealthy people to siphon riches off of.  Yet socialism isn't about generating income, it's about spreading around what already exists, and eventually you would deplete your storehouse of wealthy tax "donors."  What are you left with then?  An empty hourglass, or at least a withered and dried up source of free goods.

Who would want Socialism?

From the time you were a small child, you were told to share.  You might've even been disciplined for not sharing as a child.  From what some in the media tells us, Capitalism rewards the rich & greedy, while it abuses the disadvantaged in society.  Following this logical thinking then, wouldn't socialism be the solution to most of our modern-day inequality and cure all of our poverty?

And, if we had free healthcare, free college -- like we already have free public schools, and free everything else, wouldn't we be a healthier and happier culture.  Let's come back to this question.

Most of the people I talk with who favor Socialism do not really seem to know what they are in favor of.  It seems that most of the people in favor of Socialism think that all of the "free" stuff comes from a limitless supply of abundance, but they don't stop to ask from where would these resources flow.  

Socialism is an ideology, it's a perspective that endorses the government's control over the production of goods & services, and the distribution or redistribution of said goods.  Socialism, really is about a collective ownership where no one really has personal property, and it removes the need for individualism, giving the government total control over all material wealth.  And, it's a system that generates the highest taxation of its people.

One of the disadvantages of Socialism is the government has to increase exponentially to take over control of the private sector.  This is interesting to me since most of the younger voters who are on the side of Bernie Sanders do not embrace the idea of the government telling us the people what to do.  One of Bernie's platforms is legalizing marijuana, a removal of governmental control over it.  This is interesting, because on the one hand it seems like the voice of the people wins, but in reality, it's just another way to increase tax revenue on a commodity that people who want to consume it will consume it regardless of its legality.

Another disadvantage to Socialism is the reality that it removes the incentive of hard work.  In the real world, people do enjoy the fruits of their labor, not someone else's labor.  Yet, if you lived under the control of a Socialistic government, there would be people who simply would not be motivated to work hard, because they would know that the benefits of all of their hard work would be shared with the many able-bodied people who have never had to work for anything (who in turn, aren't motivated to work at all...).   Think of this example, if you could receive a college degree just for enrolling in college, but you didn't have to attend classes, would you do it?  Who wouldn't?  But, what would that do to the value of higher education?

But what about generosity and philanthropy, wouldn't those ideals override the weakness of character that would demotivate the hard worker who didn't want to give away his spoils?  Generosity only works on a volunteer basis.  If you can't willingly give from the heart, but you are made to share anyway, then it means what was yours was forcefully taken from you.  And, the only people who can't understand this, are people who have never had to work for anything, they've had everything handed to them already.

Margret Thatcher, former British Prime Minister, once quipped, "The problem with Socialism is you eventually run out of other people's money."   Maybe that's not entirely accurate, maybe the problem with Socialism is, you run off other people who would work hard to earn money.  Instead of a redistribution of wealth, what we need is a redistribution of a healthy work ethic.

I'm not saying Capitalism is perfect, nor would I say our world is perfect now, not by a long shot.  We have a long way to go towards improving equality in our culture, but Socialism isn't even close to the answer.  I would say with confidence that Socialism has failed everywhere it's been tried.  More people starved to death in the 20th Century under Socialist governments than those who died fighting in wars during the same time period.  In present-day countries under the control of socialism, the middle class has been taxed so heavily, there is almost no middle class, thus leaving a wider gap between the wealthy and the poor, resulting in the bankruptcy of several European countries.

Now, back to the question of Socialism increasing our happiness through giving us free stuff.  Please go and ask people who work hard for their for the money how happy they are, and then ask someone who lives off of welfare how happy they are, preferably asking someone who is a second or third generation family member that depends on welfare.  Please let me know who seems to be the happier of the two to you.  Better yet, ask a refugee from a Socialistic country who has fled their homeland to come to the land of opportunity how happy they were under Socialism...

You see, Socialism isn't really about sharing, it's ultimately about taking.  It's legalized confiscation and a bureaucratic method of deciding who gets what, not based on sharing your own sweat equity or how well you contribute to the whole, but it's based on what the government deems appropriate for you to consume and enjoy.  In the end, the only thing Socialism is good for, is for providing material for dystopian stories.