Thank you for you serious responses. I have nothing against redistributing wealth that people voluntarily choose to redistribute. Private charity is a wonderful thing. I do not agree with giving government the power to redistribute under penalty of jail. Leaving aside the obvious issues of property rights (which I’m sure you don’t care about) I just don’t want that much power in the hands of the government. If that power can be used for what you view as good ends, it can also be used for what others view as good ends, but you view as horrible ends.

Government is both the greatest protector of our liberties and the greatest threat to them. Our founders understood this and divided government into small pieces (executive/judicial/legislative, federal/state/county/city) and gave it limited power. The history of the last 200 years has been the history of a more or less steady accumulation of power in the federal government, destroying the delicate balance our founders put in place. Your program, if ever implemented, would be another huge step in that (wrong) direction.

The biggest contributor to poverty in the world is corrupt governments who do not respect private ownership. When a government can come in and take your property and take your wealth - whatever its form - then you have no security, and no motivation to attempt to accumulate wealth.

Well said!

I would add that we only really appreciate what we have struggled for.

Except that you don’t have the right to take from one person to give to another no matter how noble your motives. If you give a government that right - and that’s the only way you can do it other than at the point of a gun - you only posses what you posses as long as the government allows you. The biggest contributor to poverty in the world is corrupt governments who do not respect private ownership. When a government can come in and take your property and take your wealth - whatever its form - then you have no security, and no motivation to attempt to accumulate wealth.

>>It takes money to be equal. >>

No.. Money is not equality. If that’s the basis of the demand for equality, no wonder we have a problem!

Here are a couple of thoughts for you in this regard…

http://www.etsu.edu/english/3134/zwjs2/RCOREY.HTM

http://www.etsu.edu/english/3134/zwjs2/MCHEEVY.HTM

You may be able to ‘redistribute’ the physical manifestation of the symbol of work and productivity, aka value, but you will never be able to ‘redistribute’ the ability of people to work harder to people that can’t work as good.

You can redistribute the physical products and benefits of that work, like say the wealth created from slavery, to the people that don’t work in the field, the plantation masters, helen, but you will never be able to give someone the ability to work if they do not already have it. Nor will you be able to give someone the willingness to work harder, simply by making other people be willing to work less harder.

Your goals are not realistic because they are too fantastic to be even possible. It is not even in the realm of possibility, helen. This is the reality you wish to chase? A manufactured dream that will never be true and even if it was true, it would bring hell on earth?

Doesn’t anyone recognize chaos?

This is not in dispute, and it convinced me that what we call the “black race” has no basis in reality. We have to be a LOT more precise in our language if our ideas are to have any meaning.

Notice the difference in origin of champion sprinters v. long- distance runners, although they are all of the “black race”. Examples could be multiplied, and are — read the book.

Every human being, black or white or yellow or whatever, deserves “equality”, if that means equal opportunity to strive and equality before the law. Given that, we’re going to see a diversity of outcomes, and some of them will appear to be assorted according to ethnic group, skin color, etc. My reply is “So?” Every attempt to ensure that outcomes are “equal” has led to disaster. Let’s not do the same thing, expecting a different result.

In “Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos of Community” (1964) King identified the problem: white people are satisfied with progress, but blacks want equality.

Isn’t that where we started?