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 perhaps a full tenth of the books I once obtained. 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, even imprison or shoot me; for I’ve had my “three score and ten,” and wouldn’t want to be greedy.

But 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 cause that is close to his heart. Of course, if you are a Liberal or Woke Marxist you think he should be paying always 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 situation is this, however. The money the government impounds is almost entirely wasted, just as its costly regulations — at least nine in ten — are 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 from 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 supposedly wasted by the rich “trickles down” more carefully from private hands, to the many good causes, including making others rich. And when it comes to financing those “Christian” 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 buy power corruptly. In particular, all genuine cultural life is financed 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, this is no one else’s business, and we would all benefit if at least 95 percent of the government were permanently closed. Even the bureaucrats would benefit, as I did, from being stripped of their jobs and income.