A
friend sent me an email with the following quote or compilation of
quotes of uncertain yet purportedly esteemed authorship.
A
democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only
exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves
largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority
always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the
public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses
over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. The
average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.
. . . Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to
spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from
liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness
to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to
dependence, from dependence back again to bondage. . . .
My
response begins with a quotation regarding wealth in America.
In
2007 the richest 1% of the American population owned 34.6% of the
country's total wealth, and the next 19% owned 50.5%. Thus, the top
20% of Americans owned 85% of the country's wealth and the bottom 80%
of the population owned 15%. Financial inequality was greater than
inequality in total wealth, with the top 1% of the population owning
42.7%, the next 19% of Americans owning 50.3%, and the bottom 80%
owning 7% (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth).
At
this point please read my recent blog:
http://www.wayneblogs.com/2012/09/the-abundance-of-nations.html
In
conclusion, in my opinion the present state of wealth distribution in
America puts the government under enormous pressure to somehow render
less egregious the unequal distribution of wealth. The root of the
problem is that the poor must depend on the government to
redistribute wealth (or, as is now the case, fabricate a sense of fairness) in some form or other as there is no other
remedy. A fervent fiction in capitalism is that individuals “earn
every penny” of their disproportionate wealth and completely
discount the fact that wealth arises from many sources but is
filtered by a few. Contributions to wealth formation include the
yeoman effort of many, flourishing markets, and substantial
infrastructure support. Thus while wealth arises from many sources,
capitalism tends to redistribute it to the few. And the wealthy,
while gifting some of their wealth to others, en mass do not do
enough of it as some people are more selfish than others.
So,
my friend, under the circumstances, I do not see dependency on
government as a problem for it is indeed government that must more
effectively devise ways and means to make up for the inability of
capitalism alone to fairly distribute wealth. There is no other
institution that can effectively do so. I am fully aware that the
“market economy” purportedly does that, but it is palpably
obvious based on the present distribution of wealth in America that
it does not do so.
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