There has been a lot of discussion lately about redistribution of wealth. The President has been pushing the idea, and this week Pope Francis also made comments about poverty and wealth inequality and the need for redistribution. I am not a fan of taking away someone’s property and giving it to someone else, but I do agree that in many places in the world there is abject poverty coexisting with unimaginable wealth. The term oligarchy has become popular of late, to describe a society ruled by a few very wealthy.
As I said we discussed the problem and various solutions at some length, and my son mentioned Peter Singer, who he was required to read in college. Singer’s “Famine, Affluence, and Morality” asserts (forgive the oversimplification) that if you have enough money you should donate your excess to the poor.
As many of you are aware I am a fan of Dave Ramsey and Dave advocates “living like no one else so that later you can live like no one else”. The first part is about being frugal and living within your means and paying off debt and saving for the future. One might think the second part is about having yachts and sports cars and living the high life. Certainly there is nothing wrong with boats and cars but I think the best part of being wealthy would be having the ability to help others. As Dave has said, “the weak cannot help the weak. Only the strong can help the weak”. One of the best things about being wealthy (I have heard) is that you get to have the joy of helping people in need to rise above their circumstances.
And so we come to the idea of just giving money to the poor. Whether this is a successful idea depends entirely on the poor person you are giving money to. Some people have character and ambition and all they need is a little help to rise up out of their situation. Some people do not have those things, and will spend the money on liquor and prostitutes.
Smoking cigarettes is a bad idea. Eventually there is a good chance you will get lung cancer. If you drink too much you will get a hangover, and if you keep drinking you will ruin your health. Food is necessary for life, but we have all seen people who have an addiction to food, and it is ruining their health and in some cases their lives. Gambling and pornography can become overwhelming addictions that can also destroy lives.
Some people feel that government should play a much more active role in making sure that people do not have these addictions, and other bad behaviors. Exercise and reading great literature and getting involved in your community are great things as well, but legislating these things is not practical. In the end it comes down to the individual. Society and government can try to encourage people to do the right things and avoid the wrong things, but the more we try to force people to do what is right the more we curb individual liberties.
If a person eats too much they are likely to incur more health care costs. Smokers will also face higher costs when they eventually get cancer. But we cannot outlaw food, and so as we try to equalize people in terms of wealth and income we face the problem that we are going to share the burdens of people that make bad choices. And if we are all going to have to pay for your future health care we want to have a say in your lifestyle choices. And there goes our individual liberty.
There is another approach. We can let people be responsible for the consequences of their own actions. This seems cruel and uncaring to some, because after a person has drank themselves to cirrhosis of the liver or smoked themselves into lung cancer we still have compassion and want to make sure they receive proper medical care. I understand the emotion, but I think the responsibility for a person’s actions should remain with the individual.
In many cases people want to quit smoking or drinking or eating too much, and as a society we need to help those people to do the right thing. In other cases the individual is defiant, and has no intention of changing their lifestyle to conform to society. In those cases society should not have to bear the burden of poor decision making. We have all seen the interventions on television where family members gather together to tell a loved one, “I love you very much, but if you choose to continue this behavior I cannot be a part of your life”. That is not cruelty, it is love. It is choosing not to enable bad behavior.
Poverty is the result of a number of factors, many of which have nothing to do with bad decisions or bad behaviors. Perhaps a child is born an orphan and learns the ways of the streets in Chicago or Indonesia and does not know there are other options. Ignorance is not willful defiance. Or maybe medical issues or weather events affected the family to the point that people cannot crawl out of a financial hole. Some very good workers lose their job when a large factory closes through no fault of their own.
Americans are among the most generous people on earth. We give to charity and we give a lot. Private charities are able to target their efforts to find those most deserving and most in need, whereas government programs must put on blinders and ignore the causes of the hardships people face.
We do need redistribution of wealth. We need to voluntarily redistribute wealth from the wealthiest among us to the least fortunate by means of private charity. We need to fund programs to help people overcome addictions. We need to fund education for those who desire but cannot afford it. We need to feed and house people who have fallen on hard times. But we do not need to enable bad behavior. We need for people to face the consequences of poor decisions. Those people need tough love.
One of the keys to overcoming poverty is the same key that has been in place since the dawn of man. Institutions are poorly equipped to provide the proper nurturing and care and discipline needed to raise children into productive and mature adults who contribute to society and are able to help their fellow man.
The best way to raise good adults is to strengthen the FAMILY. Your family can show you love and discipline and encouragement and tough love and respond to what the individual needs with the appropriate blend of each. Every child is different and only a loving family can provide for what each child needs and be there through thick and thin.
Our families, generally speaking, are falling apart. According to the latest statistics, 40.7 percent of American children are born out of wedlock. CNN’s Don Lemon gave a commentary in 2013 that went viral where he discussed the out of wedlock percentage in the African American community being 72 percent.
I think the ideal family is one where children are raised by their biological mother and father, for a lot of reasons. But let me be clear – any family that provides the proper love and support and guidance to young children is a good family.
As a father of three grown kids who turned out pretty well, let me say that fathers are largely to blame for the problems with families these days. Not the ones that do the right thing and stay married to the kids mother and keep the family intact and provide the guidance that young children desperately need. I am talking about the idiots that think their role is to impregnate a woman and then walk away. The so-called “baby daddies”.
There are far too many single mothers out there struggling to make ends meet and making sure their kids gets bathed and fed and get to school before they leave for work. Studies consistently show that one of the biggest indicators of success for kids is growing up in a stable home with two parents who stay married. A family.
The government cannot punish you for smoking cigarettes or drinking, but you Mom can. Government cannot make you go to church, but your Mom can. Government cannot make you eat vegetables or say no to another bowl of ice cream, but your Mom can.
Many men are failing at being fathers, but by and large women are stepping up and taking care of their responsibilities. There is a special love that a Mother has for her children, and they deserve more credit than we can ever give them for doing the right thing and making us wash behind our ears and do our homework and go to bed so we can get some sleep.
If your Mother did the right thing you need to give her a big hug and kiss and thank her. But take it a step further, especially if you are male. Get married, stay married, and support the Mother of your children. After all, they are the one thing keeping our society together.
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