Thinking is hard. Reading is fun. Thinking about things I've read is sometimes downright exhausting.
A couple of years ago, I struggled through The Snowball. It was a somewhat easy read as far as books go, but I kept putting it down to ponder why I was bothered about something I'd read: Warren Buffet admired Andrew Carnegie. At the end of a life spent accumulating great wealth, Mr. Carnegie did the unthinkable and gave it all away. Warren hopes to do the same. My question is: why wait until then? If one's passion is to be charitable, wouldn't they choose to engage in it as frequently as they could?
In a discussion about this, I commented that perhaps if Mr. Carnegie had paid his employees more, their lives would have been better, thus enabling them to turn around and help others. The response given back of, "they agreed to work for what he paid them, didn't they?" was less than I was looking for. So I tried to come at it from another angle. "Just take those house-flipping shows on TLC. Someone buys a house, puts $50,000 and 5 weeks into it. Turns around and sells it for $300,000 more than they paid for it. That's just not right." It was then pointed out that "if someone is stupid enough to buy it for that, a person would be stupid not to sell it."
As you might imagine, it still wasn't sitting right with me.
And FINALLY.........after having this issue work its way through my brain for a couple of years without being able to define exactly why it bothered me, I was clobbered with an epiphany: I have to look at myself in the mirror and like what is looking back. My moral compass will not allow me to engage in cutthroat business practices (or admire those who do), nor justify taking advantage of someones "stupidity" as the means to acquire funds that can then be given away on a huge scale close to the time of my demise. True, many people benefit to this day from the funds Mr. Carnegie gave so that libraries might be built. His vision of free libraries was noble. And placed the continued funding of them right on the shoulders of tax-payers. Forever.
If I understand things correctly (and there's always a chance I don't), our government has obligated us to pay for a multitude of programs designed to help one misfortunate creature after another. And by "creature" I mean things that are too big to fail. Without your consent, they have signed your name to an IOU they exchanged for credit from another country. They even agreed that you'll pay interest on the IOU at whatever rate the loaning country desires. In fact, our government wants to help others so badly, they've signed your yet-to-be-born great-grandchildren's name on the IOU.
As your Queen, that crap is going to stop. (I sometimes suffer from situational Tourettes. Consider this my blanket apology for every occurrence.)
How about if we fund wars through lottery tickets? The motto could be: War - you can't play if you don't pay.
Could we have a National Bake Sale Day to raise money for WIC?
Who wants to have the largest Pampered Chef party with proceeds going for the ethanol subsidy?
And the list goes on and on. Because once a government program starts, it never stops. Much like the Carnegie libraries.
So ask your Magic 8 Ball if you should pay interest on money borrowed for Citigroup bonuses and give it a good shake. Let me know what it says. Mine keeps saying Outlook not so good.
Sites that may have value http://www.zerohedge.com/
http://urbansurvival.com/
(or a few laughs)
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