What I Recall Is Not Much Like What I See

Last week I had the occasion to ride my old mountain bike around town for a while. It didn't feel anything like I had remembered. The gearing is substantially different from my current road bike, the saddle hits me differently, and the shifters function in now unfamiliar ways. Riding the mountain bike brought back some distant memories of when I rode that bike all the time, but the old and new bikes bear relatively little functional resemblance to one another.

Listening to the radio and reading about our current political culture gives me a similar feeling. What happened to the America that I used to know? As I listen, read, and observe, it appears that our current political and social climate seems only vaguely familiar. When did we become a country of entitlement? Where hard work is punished and degraded and where people expect to receive something of value for no other reason than the fact that someone else has more? When did we become a country that would even take notice of protesters who are calling for punitive taxation of those who have accumulated wealth because, in the protesters' views, the wealthy don't need what they have? We have always been a country that valued philanthropy, but "forced philanthropy" is nothing less than stealing.

Have the protesters considered the rational and logical extension of their calls for taxation reform? For those who are students, would they favor the school administrators taking a portion of their 3.8 GPA and redistributing those grade points to someone with a 2.7--just because a 3.8 is higher? In 2002, it was reported that 3 billion people on this planet live on less than $2.00 per day. Would the protesters be OK with most of their "wealth" being taken from them and sent to those 3 billion people? Would the protesters be happy with opening their homes to the homeless in their cities--under government compulsion--just because some people have no place to call home, or have sufficient, but smaller homes?

It is easy to gain support for the notion of "taxing the rich" because "the rich" are always someone else. The rich or the elites or the _________ (fill in your favorite target) are always someone distant and different. They are never our friends, or our family members, or ourselves. But have the current "Occupy" protesters considered that to someone else, they are the rich or the elite or some other target?

Instead of the current political and social focus on taking from those who have in order to redistribute to those who do not have, why not look at creating opportunities for those who do not have to improve their lot in life? Rather than the focus on taking from others, why not focus on improving ourselves? Taking someone else's wealth is not a long term solution to anyone's poverty (or the fact that someone else may have more than me).

Don't get me wrong, I am all for compassion and generosity. I believe that these are virtues that support our American social compact. But forced compassion and generosity are neither compassionate nor generous.

Pressing on,
-Ken

P.S. As always, my views expressed in this blog are just that--my views. They do not necessarily represent the views of my firm, my clients, my friends, my church, or my family.