Spreading the Wealth Never Ends Well

Rabbi Michael Lerner turned a mourning service for Muhammad Ali into a pep rally for left-wing causes on Friday in Louisville.

“How do we honor Muhammad Ali?” Lerner asked an audience of 15,000. “The way to honor Muhammad Ali is to be Muhammad Ali today.” He said this calls on of us to “tell the one percent who own 80 percent of the wealth of this country that it’s time to share their wealth…”

A leftist rabbi turning the death of a celebrity into a socialist/leftist cause? How unoriginal.

Most people will probably applaud this line: “The one percent who own 80 percent of the wealth should share it.”

But why should they share it? Why are they obliged to share it? Did they steal it? If not, then why must they be forced to turn it over? Remember that socialism is not voluntary. Socialism is not a suggestion. It’s a mandate.

Most will reply, “Well, those wealthy have more than they need.” But don’t most of us have more than we need? Don’t all of us engage in discretionary spending? In other words, don’t all of us — regardless of our income level, even if it’s minimum wage — buy things we don’t absolutely need to survive? Things such as iPhones, computer games, snack food, more expensive brands of clothing, a nicer house, music, etc.?

If it’s wrong to keep more than you need, then isn’t it wrong for all of us to keep more than we need? Why are the top 1 percent of earners shamed and blamed for having more than they need, while those in the next percentile, or down the earning chain, are not? Who made this such a self-evident rule?

And does anyone stop to think of the effect that getting free money has on others? When you’re given something as an entitlement, do you appreciate and value it the same as if you earned it? Do you value it the same as if someone gave it to you because they love you as a person, and think you’re special? That’s not what government does. Government gives you other people’s money because you have a beating heart, you possess human DNA, and because you’re breathing. And because you pass some incomprehensible means test, which you can probably get away with lying on, when you fill it out. How is this compassion? What does this do to the person receiving it?

“Spread the wealth.” We talk about people as if they’re inanimate objects. We talk as if the only people having their wealth spread are the top one percent. In reality, all working people pay taxes. Everyone has their wealth spread around, unless they earn no money at all. We speak as if justice and property rights do not apply to people once they achieve a certain income, no matter how great their achievement or how hard they worked. We ignore the impact of that wealth spreading on the rest of the population. After all, the hated one percent spend their money on things: investments, which create jobs and expand the economy; and luxury items, which also create jobs and expand the economy.

“Spreading the wealth” will happen whether you impose huge taxes on the hated one percent, or not. It’s only a question of whether those who get to spread it are consumers and investors in the marketplace, or power-hungry politicians with permanent perches in Washington DC. That’s the real issue here: power, not compassion, and not “spreading” of anything.

Wealth spreading never ends well. Socialist and communist dictatorships, even when they start out democratic, eventually end in bankruptcy and ruin, unless they reverse course in the direction of economic freedom and property rights. Such handouts make the person dependent. They also give the person a sense of unearned entitlement. “You gave this money simply because I had less. Well, I still have less. Give me more.” You see this in families all the time. A family member with more money than another will bail out the other family member — not because the other family member has done something admirable, like study hard in school, or achieve something great, but because the other family member has used bad judgment (e.g. abusing drugs, running up credit card debt, bad romantic choices) and needs a bailout. When you reward and subsidize something, you generally get more of it. When you send the message to someone, via your actions, that they are entitled to be immune from the consequences of their choices, and in fact they deserve more aid the worse judgments they make, then you teach them to depend on you and to be irresponsible. It’s true on the individual or family level, and it’s equally true on the social and political level.

When you reward people’s bad or stupid behavior, you’re sending a message: “You are entitled to a bailout when you use bad judgment.” Within families, the productive or responsible family members will not get the bailouts. They don’t need them, and don’t generally want them.

It’s so easy to applaud spreading the wealth, because it does not require any thinking. “Someone else has too much. Give it to someone who needs it.” Who would ever dare disagree with such a sentiment? It makes people who applaud feel good about themselves. It also makes the people who get the freebies feel better, for a time. But it also makes them feel like they are entitled to the unearned, for no other reason than someone else has more of it.

What happens when this becomes a widespread social policy? A society goes into decline. You wonder why America, once a proud, prosperous nation full of individualists, is going through a decline? This is why. Spreading the wealth never ends well. Americans are about to learn this, just like Communists, Nazis, fascists, tribal savages and the Roman Empire all learned it before us. Right now, there’s a lot of finger-pointing and accusations, but reality is closing in faster than most of us probably know. America is not immune to the laws of reality, and America is in for a real reality shocker.