This morning an elderly woman in a small red Versa, inched into my path in front of me, from a perpendicular roadway. She slowly…excruciatingly slowly…. moved… into…. a …straight…. position … and began to drive. I had the right of way, however it was my responsibility to slow down and not clip the front of her car as she turned. Even though I have the right to drive at the speed limit, and had I smacked her car, her insurance would pay, the responsibility not to injure comes first. This may be a revelation to those who adopt the “values” of this dependent, entitlement, victim mentality society.
A right is not a license or a mandate. It must be tempered by Responsibility, justice and balance.
Even though it slowed me down and cost me a portion of my time, my personal responsibility, as a human being according to American Judeo-Christian values, was to save this woman from harm, property destruction and anguish and not assert my “rights”. That is justice.
Now, imagine if we offload this responsibility to the government. Now, we no longer stop unless there is a cop or traffic signal. Anyone who cuts us off is a criminal or we sue them for damages (that otherwise we would avoid). There is no stopping at the cross walk for pedestrians. The elderly woman makes her slow turn but now the rest of society bears the burden.
The poor have the personal responsibility to take any job , no matter how low paying or demeaning, so as to avoid asking for charity.
There is no right of the poor to receive help. Rather, we have the personal responsibility to help the poor. That is Justice.
The government taking taxes from people to give to others is not Justice. It is theft of both wealth and responsibility.
When the government takes away personal responsibility, as this society has, we suffer a plague of characterless people.
In principle Re-distribution of wealth is a moral responsibility.
The right to ownership/stewardship of property holds the responsibility of ensuring that it is not stolen (or given to moochers or used to make people dependent) and a compassionate responsibility to use some of it to help others.
However…
Charity is not giving back. Charity is giving forward. – Dr. Society
If you say you are giving back, you are implicitly buying into the false premise that you stole something. “Giving back” is a Communist/Socialist idea based on jealousy and revenge. They say “You didn’t build that”. They believe that all wealth is ill gotten gain and comes from cheating the worker out of fair wages.
What are you giving back? Did you steal something? You do not owe… for innovating and creating something valuable that led to wealth. Taking risk with your capital, creating and producing is not theft. You do not owe something for being successful. That is an excuse made by the jealous to comfort themselves for not succeeding and feeling like a loser compared to you. If success is due to your efforts then failure is due to their lack of efforts. The emotionally immature do not want to face that responsibility. That’s why they insist that you are not responsible for your success, Not only that, your success is the reason for their failure. Truly all they know, they learned in kindergarten.
If you give back because of guilt, you will desire and pursue accolades for your philanthropy to assuage that guilt and feel accepted by the jealous.
“Giving forward” is based on compassion and caring for your neighbor as you would yourself. It is based on gratitude for success and abundance and the desire to see others succeed and prosper, the pleasure derived from their achievements and the ability to target capital to what is significant to you.
The right to property or more accurately the right to ownership and stewardship of property was not spelled out in the Declaration of Independence because slaves were considered property and the founders did not want to enshrine slavery as a right. Property is the result of investing life and liberty, therefore they left the right of property to be implicitly derived from the right to life and liberty.
The only direct reference to a right to property in the Constitution is the stricture forbidding the government from taking property without just compensation.
Fulfilling our responsibilities/obligations/duties personally is part of character development and builds virtue into society. The people are self-controlled and self-governed rather than having to be controlled by government.
People need guidance, learning of life skill, job skills, to feel the care of a fellow Human Being not just to be handed money, food stamps, unemployment or any of the other mere handouts. People need a hand UP that only personal interaction between the giver and the receiver can offer.
Second best is to appoint an agent, such as a Church or Synagogue or other local Charitable person, group or organization, who cares and can offer more than just hand outs, to distribute our wealth for us in a responsible fashion and not waste it or use it to enrich themselves.
The worst possible solution is to have a remote, impersonal government or Large organization who distributes only a small portion of your voluntary contribution in a manner that fosters dependence and irresponsibility in the receiver. People in need are that way because of a deficit of not just money. To really help we must mitigate the other deficits that usually are the root of the lack of money. Helping a person to become self-reliant is the goal. Perhaps that means drug or alcohol rehabilitation and counseling, training, proper living space (not in housing projects that are crime ridden, vermin-infested, disease incubating traps), having them help others, medication and/or psychological regimen to combat depression, anxiety, bipolar ADHD or other disorders, nutritional counseling, child care, time management, cooking skills or even just the feeling of being cared for or belonging and not being isolated. The key is personal involvement of a mentor/friend or at least another human being who cares. Like School, you have to be present to learn.
At no point though can the right to the ownership and stewardship of our life and liberty (property) be taken from us against our will and without just and direct compensation.
The problem with Government re-distribution, as instituted, is that it is not voluntary or personal. It relies of the forcible taking of property without direct compensation to the owner and distribution by a giant un-elected (not made an agent) bureaucracy motivated by Corrupt Political expediency to buy votes of people made dependent on the government. That some people in society are helped, or that some jobs are created by this form of re-distribution is not compensation to the owner. It is subversion of personal responsibility, stewardship and the economy’s market intelligence.
The role of re-distribution should be relinquished by the National Government and given back to the people and their communities and, at worst, states on a voluntary basis for the above moral reason. That would also solve most of the Political corruption and creating of dependency issues of a giant bureaucracy.
Re-distribution must be just.
What is the point of Re-distribution if it harms the individual and society?
If you give money to a drunk they will eventually drink themselves to death.
If you take wealth by force from one individual to give to another, it leads only to resentment of the one taken from, indifference of the bureaucrat who dispenses the wealth and the sloth and dependency of the receiver of the wealth.
What is the point of giving charity unless you are giving of yourself and the wealth you earned or own?
The bureaucrat is not giving of themselves and their wealth. The wealth belongs to someone else and they are getting paid to give away this wealth.
If you get paid to give away someone else’s wealth, that is not charity, it’s a job. If the wealth was forcibly taken then you are working for a pirate or a criminal. Only voluntary work is charity.
Re-distribution through theft is not justice. Bernie Madoff giving charity from the money he stole from unsuspecting investors in his Ponzi/pyramid scheme is not just.
So-called Entitlements are theft according to American values and the Constitution’s standard of Justice. The government forcibly transfers the title of your property to someone else who they en-title. Most of us are not aware that this is theft because the philosophy of Communism, which considers all property as belonging to the government, is so entrenched in American Politics, culture, education and media.
Government Entitlements were instituted, starting in the early 20th Century, based on the, then popular false belief that the Communist philosophy would be the savior of humanity and not just another way to rule OVER the people. Under this communal philosophy, all property belongs to the government (as supposed trustees of “the people”). According to Communist philosophy, the government has title to your property and it is therefore just to distribute it “fairly”, as they see fit.
Wage controls, such as the minimum wage, is wealth re-distribution by another name Business does not pay for the wage increases, you and other taxpayers do. .
Wealth re-distribution is Marxist and is theft. The government takes title of your property (nationalizing it) without just compensation and does something with it that you do not see a return on.
Progressive taxes, which nationalizes wealth from high earners, which is then funneled to low-income voters.
Printing a Trillion Federal reserve notes a year that funnel wealth away from all the people to fund the new notes once again Nationalizing the people’s wealth into government and bank pockets (incidentally puffing up wall street)
Wage control which redistributes wealth for all the people to those who work for minimum wage.
The 16th Amendment, allowing theretofore unconstitutional and unjust confiscation of your property through Marxist progressive income taxation, was passed in 1913.
Government is run by corruptible human beings. The reality of human nature is that when people are given access to all the wealth, they will hoard it for themselves and their interests. They will use it to keep themselves in a position of power and continue reaping what you sowed. In our corrupted Federal government, the people’s wealth is funneled into buying votes, through pork, entitlements and Crony capitalism.
Re-distribution is just only when the individual willingly gives from their property and the receiver feels an obligation to only take what is needed.
Government has no right to your property and no obligation to re-distribute what it can’t own. So-called government property is the people’s property that is held in trust.
It belongs to the people not the Government.
