In last Thursday’s posting we viciously attacked rock icon Bono
of the Irish group U2, a name that sounds like the Hun invading. We reported that
he had mentioned in an interview with somebody-or-other that capitalism has
lifted more people out of poverty than even the most massive foreign aid. We also squealed on him by noting that he has
actually said Good Things about America and Americans. Obviously the man is a complete nutcase.
Let’s consider the implications, however. The problem is that redistributing existing
wealth via foreign or any other kind of aid is not any kind of solution, and
it’s not going to fix a broken system.
It’s an expedient in an emergency.
It’s only by chance that redistributing wealth lifts anyone out of
poverty. Usually the only people who
better their condition in a program of wealth redistribution are those doing
the redistributing. After all, they get
their cut first “for expenses.”
This, of course, requires a little clarification. Some years ago there was a book by Marvin
Kitman titled, George Washington’s
Expense Account (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970). Mr. Kitman also wrote The Number One Best Seller (New York: Dial Press, 1966) so that
anyone going into a bookstore and asking for “the number one best seller” would
receive his book. We’re almost afraid
not to mention Mr. Kitman’s other works, but there’re too many of them.
The point is not to diss General Washington, a genuinely
great man who, like all of us, had his flaws; some, like being a slave owner,
more serious than others. He was not,
however, a bad businessman. He agreed to
serve as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army without pay . . . if
Congress would just pay his expenses.
(It would not be allowed today, but this permitted Washington to
circumvent the appropriations process when Congress got a little stingy by
purchasing needed supplies for his men, like shoes and food, and then
vouchering them as “personal expenses.”)
The point is that, had George Washington failed to look
after his own interests, served for pay, and picked up his own tab for expenses,
he would have gone bankrupt, as many did. Not to mention the fact that quite possibly the troops would have been walking around hungry and
barefoot more often than they were.
Today’s welfare bureaucrats also look after themselves
first. No harm in that. The difference is that Washington undertook a
specific job with a clear beginning and a clear end. He was a planter, and every moment spent away
from Mount Vernon was detrimental to his livelihood. The war was a diversion.
Today’s welfare bureaucrats, whether in the governmental
public sector or the charitable private sector benefit themselves not by ending
poverty, but by prolonging it. Their job
is not to do themselves out of employment by ending poverty, but to alleviate
poverty to make it sufficiently bearable so that the bureaucrats whose
livelihoods and careers depend on “helping the poor” will secure their positions
by always having “the poor” to help. It
doesn’t pay them to end poverty, where it definitely paid Washington to get the
whole business of the Revolution over with.