to redistribute or not to redistribute, that is the question america answered eons ago

by Mike Bullis

The idea that taxation is really government confiscation of "my" resources seems so simple and obvious, that it's hard to argue with. Particularly when I look at my paycheck. The problem is we just haven't come up with a better way.

At one level, the problem is wealth and intelligence and success aren't distributed equally. God knows I wish they were. Roughly ten percent of the people alive today will be very successful as measured by money accumulation. Partly because they're smarter than the rest of us, and partly because they're luckier. Then there is a broad group of about seventy percent of the population who will pretty much eek out a living, not being able to save much, and working from day to day. When they get old or have a crisis in health, they'll either be thrown over the side of the boat or we'll find a way to help them. We used to send them to poor farms here in the U.S. and in other societies we just let them die.

Then there is the bottom fifteen or twenty percent. They're just plain too stupid or lazy or, well, hell, you could say lots of things about them. They're a drain on society because no matter how much we spend on them they don't ever seem to get to the place that they'll really contribute to the over all good. So, what do we do with or about them?

What seems to happen in societies is that if we just leave them to fend for themselves, they unite with some of that broader seventy percent group and overthrow the rest of society. They're starving and desperate and eventually they get behind some new leader who promises them a piece of the pie that they, either through inability or lack of initiative, have been unable to get for themselves.

Much of the government turmoil in Central America, Central Africa, Indonesia and other places can give you a glimpse of what happens when you let massive parts of the population starve or fend for themselves. It leads to social instability, rampant crime and government instability--which translate into revolutions. The solution is often brutal dictatorships to keep the masses under control.

The honest truth is that we really struggle with this as a society. It offends our sense of justice that people who haven't contributed should get what "we" earned. But, again, we just haven't found a better way.

Republicans have used mantras against "socialism" and "wealth redistribution” very successfully since the 1980's. It plays well with voters, particularly if they're young and healthy--read as in baby-boomers. The dirty little secret is that Republican leadership knows what I've said above as well. They know that our society would not long tolerate the abandoning of the poor. They know it wouldn't be tolerated not just because it's ultimately cruel and destabilizing to society, but, it's destabilizing to Capitalism.

When John McCain calls Barack Obama a socialist he's really saying that the Democrats are far more willing than he is to pander to these unworthy groups and promise them more of the money they haven't earned than are the Republicans.

Every society has interest groups that form around particular issues. In the simplistic view, there are the free enterprise business interests and the humanitarian interests.

Although we capitalists talk about the fact that capitalism raises all boats, we've never been able to prove our contention. Yes, we can argue that capitalism raises the overall level of society's value (whether measured in dollars or production or standard of living), but the truth is that many are still left out.

Our country, in the 1930's came to a crisis point. We had had several major recessions in our history. The one in the 1890's was horrendous. The one after the Civil War was also very ugly. Millions out on the roads without a place to live, people dying without help. It was truly awful.

In the 1930's we decided that, whatever we may think about society, we had to do something to keep society from disintegration. We were being hit by the Communists, saying that capitalism was using workers and not giving them the value for their work. We had Hitler who argued that the superior amongst us should be allowed to cull out the inferior.

Our nation truly stood at a brink. Would we intervene to stabilize or simply let the chips fall where they would.

We chose to stabilize. I don't regret that decision.

Rather than simply inflame the masses against government and against programs we truly need for social stability, I'd rather work toward a government that produces results more efficiently.

The problem right now, is that for the past thirty years, the distance between the top and the bottom is increasing. That seventy percent in the middle is getting smaller and smaller. Their incomes are going down. Those kindly companies that we work for have found it more expedient to reward shareholders than employees. Although unions got greedy and out of control, the thing they did provide through the 70's in our country, was a baseline for wages and benefits. They gave workers some bargaining power, a place at the corporate table if you will. When unions declined, working people had no bargaining power. No matter what we capitalists say, we don't give up our profits willingly to workers. Yes, yes, I know, the marketplace should fix that.

But, the truth is that the marketplace devalues workers because company owners can use a so-so worker almost as well as a really good one. And, a really good worker just isn't that much more valuable to them. In other words, the rich have been getting richer and the poor have been getting poorer and the middle class has been moving toward the bottom.

There's no doubt that what we will see under Obama and a Democratically controlled Congress will be an attempt to change this. For millions in the 1930's the problem was that they simply couldn't ride out an economic crisis. Do you have two years worth of income in the bank ready for any problem that comes? If you don't, you're going to need help from someone if things get tough. Can you afford to pay your mortgage if you lose your job? If not, what will you do? If you lose your job how will you feed your kids? Put a garden plot in the backyard? That's a great idea but it won't help enough. Are you going to shoot deer in the neighborhood? Probably not a likely option for most people.

When we were a simpler society it was a bit easier for people to "live off the land" but with most of our population in cities it just isn't easy.

If, God forbid, your wife or mother should get breast cancer and die, what should happen? Will the kids just go to orphanages or live on the streets? What test do we give those in need for worthiness? How will we decide whether they're the ones who should receive help?

Look, there's no doubt that the Democrats go further than I would on helping those at the bottom. There's a fine line between too much help, cutting off the development of survival instincts and making people dependent, and not giving enough help, pushing people further toward the bottom.

My own feeling, for now, is that the Democrats will help rebalance society for a time in the direction of restabilizing the middle class. They'll probably overshoot and the Republicans will take power again to rebalance the other way. In the mean time, John McCain and the Republicans just don't answer the basic questions that we're wrestling with. The trickle down theory of economics has never worked as efficiently as they would have liked. The reality of capitalism is that in any large society, left to itself, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. What we have to do is find a way to rebalance that very real effect.

Yes, that's wealth redistribution. We should acknowledge that from the get go. We're a society that does that. Every society that has been at all successful over time has realized that it needs to be done.

If somebody finds a better way then I'm all for looking at it.