Essays in Idleness

One of the unfair advantages I have gained in life is that, at one point or another, almost everything I had was taken from me, by one injustice or another. Well, not quite everything. Towards the conclusion of my life I still retain hundreds of literary, artistic, and sentimental items, and have been able to replace many books. This, I have found, is a joyous thing, and I am much happier than I was in earlier life; much, much happier than when I had money and career prospects.

There is very little a Liberal or Woke Marxist can do to me now; perhaps imprison or shoot me; but I’ve had my “three score and ten.”

Nevertheless, I should like to defend others who are greedy, not only for a long and healthy life, but to be permitted to keep the money and property they’ve accumulated. As Thomas Sowell says, “I have never understood why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.”

It is up to the money-maker, or should be, how much he will surrender to church, charity, or favoured cause. Of course, if you are a Liberal or Woke Marxist you think he should be paying more taxes. (The top 5 percent already pay two-thirds of our taxes, incidentally.) I would give advice on how to deceive the tax-collectors, if I could, but like most little people I have no expertise.

The money the government impounds is almost entirely wasted, just as its costly regulations  are mostly unnecessary or counter-productive. The money that goes to “welfare” is quickly dissipated, and deprives others, especially family, of their opportunity and duty to help, as well as expunging humility in the poor. Let them feel honest shame if they are collecting pogey: “free money” is even more damaging to the poor than it is to rich people.

But the money of the rich “trickles down” carefully, from private hands. And when it comes to financing those eleemosynary things, the people will give them their own money, once the government withdraws. It won’t withdraw, voluntarily, however, because the government uses the money to finance its corruption, and power displays. In particular, all genuine cultural life is supplied by the rich, and also by poor individuals. What governments pay for is overwhelmingly false and ugly.

I would not recommend greed to individuals, lest it be bad for their souls. However, it is not the government’s business, and we would all benefit if at least 95 percent of the federal and provincial governments were permanently closed. Even the bureaucrats would benefit, as I did, from being stripped of their jobs and income.