Democrats a corrupted Robin Hood
Every election year Robin Hood comes out of Sherwood Forest and into the American political landscape. Almost always Robin Hood takes the form of a Democrat. In this election, he has taken the form of John Edwards, Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama.
Throughout their speeches, they have often made mention about how the income gap between rich and poor is way too large. Throughout their careers in the Senate they have authored and voted for bills which would take money, through taxes, from individuals who earned their income to give to individuals that didn’t earn anything.
You may think that I’m complimenting Democrats like Edwards, Clinton and Obama by comparing them to a popular hero like Robin Hood. But sadly many Americans fail to recognize that Robin Hood is potentially the biggest economic villain in the world.
The example set by Robin Hood is stealing from the rich to give to the poor. In terms of modern day America that would be stealing money from hard-working Americans who accumulated their wealth through labor, intelligence, talent and perseverance. Already the government tries to act like Robin Hood by punishing working Americans through a progressive income tax rewarding those who don’t work through the use of welfare and numerous entitlement programs.
To be perfectly honest, I see no problem with the income divide. There is a very good reason for the income divide in America. The American Dream is the idea that anyone can come from any beginnings and, through their intelligence, the sweat on their brow and their raw desire to succeed, can end up being a very rich person. There are plenty of examples of these people, and with every day that passes by, more and more Americans live the beautiful life of the American Dream. With the idea built into our capitalist system that “you get what you earn,” there will be some people who work very hard and thereby get a lot and become extremely rich, and there will be others that don’t work as hard and won’t be as rich.
There are two competing philosophies which fueled half a century of cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union. In the United States we have the Capitalist economic system which can be summed up as “equality of opportunity.” Some people take this opportunity and are a resounding success. Others choose to pass on the opportunity usually out of laziness. The Soviet Union, and other socialist nations have a Communist economic system which can be summed up as “equality of ends.” This means no matter what you do, how hard you work or how smart you become, you will never be able to fare better in goods or money than your less hard-working neighbors. It’s not a surprise that after less than 80 years in existence communist Russia went from Superpower to economic ruin because of this philosophy.
Robin Hood and American liberals in general are propagating this idea of “equality of ends.” Maybe they don’t support making everyone completely monetarily equal, but they certainly have expressed their desire to make the hard-working rich more equal to the poor. If you don’t believe me, then just take a gander at the economic stimulus package that Democrats in Congress are pushing for. They want 35 million families that don’t pay income taxes in America to get an income tax rebate. However, under their plan individuals that are making over $75,000 won’t get any rebate at all. Democrats are literally proposing giving tax rebates to Americans who didn’t pay a penny in taxes and don’t even consider giving a tax rebate to the people who paid tens of thousands of dollars in taxes. Democrats are seeking to extend unemployment benefits in this plan along with food stamps. A problem with the economy is that the unemployed are not working and Democrats want to take from the hard-working upper, middle and lower individuals to pay more money so people will be able to continue not to work.
It’s easy for Robin Hood to give away money to the poor; it wasn’t his money in the first place. It’s easy for Democrats in congress to promise money for poor Americans, because it was never their money either. True charity comes from the heart and not the taxpayer’s wallet.
In the upcoming election season you will hear many politicians mention that they support “re-distributing” the wealth in America. This is a flawed term. “Re-distributing” makes it sound like money in America was originally “distributed.” Just like teachers always say they don’t distribute grades, the students earn grades. Money isn’t distributed, it is earned.
There are some people in America that are poor because of any number of reasons completely outside of their control. Do they deserve charity? Of course. But the government isn’t that successful with charity. Bureaucracy causes the loss of 85 percent of the money in the welfare system. Our government likes to throw a whole bunch of money at a problem and claim right away that it has been solved. And sometimes even money isn’t the solution. Before I can believe Robin Hood or any Congressional Democrat a hero, I would like to see them give of their own personal money to help those in need instead of forcing every working American to.
Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Feb 1 2008. Filed under Opinion.
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