The Democratic approach to winning elections has remained rather consistent across the years beginning with the New Deal. They promise to distribute your tax money in a way that will buy them the most votes. What is new about this presidential election is the extent and shamelessness to which this technique is employed. The Democratic candidates are working to outdo each other in promising handouts paid for with your money.
They are not the only ones dispersing your money. Congress and the President recently approved a plan to stimulate the economy by passing out money to selective groups of people. Financial experts almost universally agree that this free money program will not help the economy. However, it does serve to buy favor for those distributing it. It is redistribution of wealth to gain political favor.
This practice is problematic on several counts. First, at root it is dishonest. There is something essentially unethical about the government using its power to forcibly extract that which belongs to one person and give it to another. The so-called progressive income tax might be viewed as unethical for the same reason. However, the current practice of redistribution of wealth is even more egregious. It is one thing to force those who make more to pay disproportionately more in order to maintain highways and armies and make other expenditures that represent the legitimate role of government. However, it is quite another matter to take that which has been coerced from those who make more and hand it over to those whom the government deems worthy.
In addition to being unethical, this practice seems to be patently unconstitutional. Though a majority on today’s Supreme Court may not view it as such, one suspects that if the writers of that document could be resurrected, they might consigned to the stocks for robbery those implicated in this practice.
This practice is also problematic because it is destructive to our economy. It is the opposite of supply-side economics, taking wealth from those who create jobs, which leads to a decline in tax revenues, which leads to higher taxes to make up the difference, which leads to further decline in tax revenues, and so on.
Yet another problem with the redistribution of wealth for political gain is its tendency toward escalation to the point of ruination. This is evident in the Democratic primaries. We find candidates seeking to outdo each other in the amount of handouts that they promise. They have already passed totals that our economy can sustain. They are bankrupting us in order to gain office.
However, our greatest concern should not be with the problems of this practice but with its political effectiveness. The fact that it works tells us that many of the American people either can’t see the dishonesty and destructiveness of this political approach, or that they don’t care that it is dishonest and destructive.
If they can’t see its problems, we have finally become a nation too poorly educated to function as a democracy. If they don’t care, we have become a nation too perverse to function as a democracy. I would be interested in your perspective on which of these problems is making this political gimmick into an effective tool.
In our next blog our plan is to consider the cultural and spiritual roots of this problem.