Won't You Be My Neighbor?

When I was a wee lad in the 70's, Mr. Rogers used to sing a song to open each show. "Won't you be my neighbor?" was his kindly mantra. It was a question, a friendly request. When Barack Obama was running for president, he once made a comment that brought me back to those days. He had said that he thought that "spreading the wealth" around was "neighborly." I thought, gee, that is a nice sentiment. Neighborly. Of course, it was a sarcastic thought. When I think of neighbors doing things for their fellow neighbor, it rarely involves being "forced" to be neighborly. This is what Barack Obama had meant. I will FORCE you to be neighborly, even if you don't want to be. It's one thing for parents to tell children that they should be neighborly and think of their fellow man, but that places responsibility on all of us to choose who is worthy of that behavior. President Obama's version of "neighborly" means that money will be taken from one person, and spent on another person, ostensibly to "help" that person. A nice thought. If only it actually did help someone.

This country has spent billions of dollars, probably much more, since the "war on poverty" began and we pretty much have the same amount of poor people we started with. Milton Friedman once laid out the four ways in which people can spend money. These ways are: when one spends money on oneself, when one spends someone else's money on oneself, when one spends one's own money on someone else, and finally, when one spends someone else's money on someone else. This last of the four ways, sadly, is the least efficient way to spend, since it is so far removed from one's own responsibilities. This last way is what we get when the government takes money, the money of citizens (under threat of imprisonment, mind you), and spends that money on someone else. Just think, if all the money sifted through inefficient, and often corrupt, government bureaucracy over the past five decades that was intended to "help the poor" was to simply have been given directly to those individuals? Allowing that money to be spent on oneself, by oneself? Sure, some people would by drugs, and a fleet of cars for their friends, but at least they could blame THEMSELVES. That's the first step in becoming responsible. Humans are far too smart to let themselves starve, and blaming "the rich" for your problems is a big mistake. The rich are looking out for themselves just like we are, they've just done better at it. All right, there are the Kennedys and the Hiltons, but most millionaires in this country were not born that way. Thinking that they got that way at your expense is utterly foolish. People usually get stinking rich when they are able to provide something we all want, and provide it cheaper than anyone else. I'm thinking of a guy named Bill Gates, I'm thinking of Henry Ford. There are many more. These individuals pursuing selfish goals of profit changed the world, for the better. It was not some government lackey, or some president. If anything, presidents and lackeys tried to STOP them from doing these things.

After thousands of years of human evolution you'd think people would realize that the more you let people control their own money, the better off society is as a whole. Do we need to revisit the pathetic standards of living in Soviet Russia? Or India a few decades ago where profit was considered evil? India has begun to adopt a more free-market economy and is exploding onto the world scene, yet, many millions still live in squalor because of the horribly failed policies of their past restrictive government. When people share in the profit of their labor, strange things happen. What incentive did fruit growers in Russia have to make sure that rotten fruit was not packed into boxes with fresh fruit? They had none because they had no share of the profits for that fruit. They simply got paid for putting apples into crates, rotten or fresh. American farmers who owned their own land would never do such a thing. Their lives depended on getting fresh fruit to a market for money. In Russia, tons and tons of apples would arrive to its destination spoiled and unusable. And people starved because of that type of "caring" for the poor, "protecting" them from the evils of greedy businessmen. The average American lived like a king compared to most of the citizens of those places. The individual must have control over his own money. If you want to start a business, go for it! If you want to give your money to a charity, go for it! Frankly, I don't WANT to be neighbors with anyone who thinks they can spend my money better than I can.