Walter Williams on the Evil That Is Wealth Redistribution

Walter WIlliams, as usual, has it exactly right regarding the evil that is wealth redistribution. He gives the marvelous example of an old woman who cannot mow her lawn or afford to have it mowed, so the government will either force someone to mow it for her, or to give her $40 to have it mowed. Everyone would identify the first one as slavery, but nobody seems to think the second one, even though the person had to work to make that $40, and now that work is forcibly given to another human being. And it is forcibly given. Try not to pay your taxes, and see what happens. For a government to be ethical, it must get money in ways other than through the use of force. If anybody has to go to jail over the government not getting their money, the way they are getting it is unethical, pure and simple. When non-government entities engage in these kinds of activities, we call them organized crime and engaging in protection rackets, etc. But just because the gang calls themselves your government, you think what they do is moral?

In the meantime, Jonah Goldberg points out that Obama's solution to an economic situation being made worse and worse by the uncertainty created by Paulson is . . . to create more uncertainty! He says he's going to engage in bold experimentation, which is a signal to the markets that "you never know just what I'll do!" It is an admission by Obama that he doesn't have a clue what he's doing, that he doesn't in fact understand the economy at all. Great. News we could have used a month ago.

John Stossel also points out that Paulson's every ignorant action weakens the economy. Seriously, if Paulson were a M.D., he would have been put in prison by now for negligence and malpractice. And Obama is now telling the hospital that just hired him that he's at least as incompetent as Paulson. Great.

In the end, for an economy to grow and be strong at all, it has to have steady, standard rules. It needs the stability of rule of law, knowing the rules won't be changed from day to day, week to week, or even month to month. What is happening and being promised is not rule of law, but rule of men, and the ever-shifting policies that comes with it. Rule by men rather than law was one of the very things our Founding Fathers fought Britain over. Why, then, are we allowing it to happen? And why did we vote back in a COngress that gave this kind of power to a single man?