Redistribution of wealth

I’ll say it up front, that I’m not an economist.  I don’t think economics is the problem.  A greedy person can profit in any economic system.  Corruption exists in capitalist systems and in communist systems of economic activity.  Human nature is the problem, not the economic system.

Of course, I realized this when I was 14, so I ‘m telling you anything you probably haven’t figured out for yourself.  The reason this has been on my mind is that I have seen enough of latter-day saint conservatives bashing other latter-day saints over the past few years over their political views.  There are LDS web sites where there are people who are ready to abandon society and head to their “bug-out” zones, taking their year’s supply of beans, rice, and Tang or whatever.  They’re the kind I described in my first book, The New World Order and Other Secret Combinations of the Last Days as being holed up in their homes, armed to the teeth, ready to shoot the next-door neighbor who unexpectedly comes knocking on the door on the eve of Armageddon, hoping to borrow a cup of sugar.  It just isn’t the Mormon way to do things.

I held a conservative viewpoint for many years, but gradually, my life’s experiences have beaten that out of me.  I am acquainted with a distinguished doctor of medicine who went to college at U.C. Berkley in 1967.  You can pretty much imagine what his political views are like.  He is one of the most highly educated people I have ever know, but he is one of the most intellectually accessible.  Almost every person he meets, he makes them feel as if they have been lifted up to his level for just a few moments.  He has no sense of pretentiousness or condescension at all about him.  He told me once that a person fluctuates between liberalism and conservatism based on their level of dependency.  When one is younger, he is dependent upon his parents, who must carry the water for him during his early life.  When we grow up and begin to exercise a feeling of independence, it’s easy to forget the past and we focus on conserving our personal resources.  We become focused on acquisition, security for our families, getting a return on our investments of time, money, and personal energies.  This leads folks in this age bracket to be come more conservative politically.  There are moral issues like abortion, gay marriage, the death penalty, etc. that play a role in one’s political affiliation, but the freedom to focus on these issues comes as a result of having ensured one’s temporal security.

As we turn the corner towards the end of life, we begin to face our increasing need to depend on others.  We see a broader perspective that shows us how we are linked to the whole.  Thus, the consciousness of our dependency and the perspective of linkage leads us to become more liberal in our views.  We begin to understand that some things we thought were important when we were younger just didn’t matter to begin with.  The way my doctor friend summarized it was, “If you’re not conservative when you’re a younger adult, you don’t have a brain; if you’re not liberal when you’re old, you don’t have a heart.”  That aphorism is a pretty good one.

Some conservative Republican friends bash Obama for his “redistributionist” mentality and how he’s trying to use the government to transfer the wealth out of the hands of the rich into the hands of the poor.  Now, I’m not a big Obama fan.  I think he’s pretty empty suit, so far. For example, his Treasury appointments enter through a revolving door from Goldman-Sachs.  You can’t bash the rich and Wall Street and then rely on Wall Street types to do your bidding.  Obama has guys like Van Jones around him who are talking about redistribution of wealth and a green economy, but then Obama appoints General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt to be his jobs czar—knowing that GE has positioned itself to profit from the government’s green jobs focus and didn’t pay any taxes on its record earnings.  You can’t soak the rich without really soaking the rich!

Now my conservative friends tell me that redistribution of wealth is a socialist principle and it’s not a part of our democratic ideals.  For the longest time, I just accepted that at face value, but I can’t anymore.  Fifty-two years of observation and experience tell me that redistribution of wealth is constantly taking place—from the poor and middle class to the wealthy.  The rich get richer because—no matter what the markets do—they are insulated.  Forty bucks out of my pocket hurts.  Forty million out of George Soros’ pocket doesn’t even pinch a little.  No matter what you do, if you work for a wage there is someone profiting off your labor. They are redistributing your wealth for their own enrichment.

Slaves worked in America for 250 years before they ever got a shot at a piece of the pie.  Even after emancipation and the passing of the 13^th Amendment, they and their descendants still didn’t get a fair break for another generation.  Every shopping mall, every movie theater, ever Sam’s Club, every airport that is built upon land that was once tilled by slaves is redistributed wealth that should have belonged to those who labored for it.  Native Americans were forced from their lands, driven by advances of white European invaders who forced them onto reservations in the most God-forsaken lands that nobody else wanted.  Once the Indians were finally settled there, having lost much of their culture, somebody discovered that their assigned reservations contained coal, oil, gold, or uranium, and the machinations started all over to take the value of their land from them.  The redistribution that has taken place for profit always has the implied threat of force somewhere in its compelling reasons.

It has always been this way.  The Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, Medieval Europe, and other places have worked pretty much the same way because it’s just human nature.  Greed and covetousness can always find suitable cover in some politically justifiable rationale.  Whether it is “Heim ins Reich” or “Manifest Destiny’ the result is that someone gets dispossessed of their property and it gets redistributed to someone with more or bigger guns.

The Lord has the best plan.  No man can come up with anything better.  And much to the dismay of my conservative friends, it involves redistribution of wealth.  In the Doctrine and Covenants, a book of LDS scripture containing modern-day revelations to Joseph Smith and his successors, we read in Section 104:

14 I, the Lord, stretched out the heavens, and built the earth, my very handiwork; and all things therein are mine.

 15 And it is my purpose to provide for my saints, for all things are mine.

 16 But it must needs be done in mine own way; and behold this is the way that I, the Lord, have decreed to provide for my saints, that the poor shall be exalted, in that the rich are made low.

 17 For the earth is full, and there is enough and to spare; yea, I prepared all things, and have given unto the children of men to be agents unto themselves.

 18 Therefore, if any man shall take of the abundance which I have made, and impart not his portion, according to the law of my gospel, unto the poor and the needy, he shall, with the wicked, lift up his eyes in hell, being in torment.

Here are the Lord’s ideas on private property and redistribution of wealth.  He says that nobody “owns” the earth or the heavens.  It all belongs to him.  Thus, there truly is no private property, but only resources that are temporarily committed into our trust for a finite time.  The Lord said that the Earth is a fully-stocked storehouse.  There is enough to go around and to help the poor if we make that our aim.  How does he intend for us to do that?  He makes the rich low.  He takes from the rich and redistributes it.  The rich that resist will end up in hell.  As Jesus said, it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven.

My affluent LDS friends all protest that this refers to tithing and fast offerings.  They only have it partly right.  In D&C 119, speaking of the law of consecration or the United Order, which is the celestial law of economics, the Lord himself said, “Verily, thus saith the Lord, I require all their surplus property to be put into the hands of the bishop of my church in Zion” (D&C 119:1).  How much giving does it take to please the Lord?  All that you have—because all of it belongs to him.

The affluent are often prone to blame the poor for idleness.  True, there are genuinely idle poor people.  The Lord condemns idleness.

Let every man be diligent in all things. And the idler shall not have place in the church, except he repent and mend his ways (D&C 75:29).

And the inhabitants of Zion also shall remember their labors, inasmuch as they are appointed to labor, in all faithfulness; for the idler shall be had in remembrance before the Lord (D&C 68:30).

Thou shalt not be idle; for he that is idle shall not eat the bread nor wear the garments of the laborer (D&C 42:42)

As that last scripture says, however, there are idle people who are not poor, but who eat the bread and wear the garments of the laborer.  This doesn’t mean only poor people who receive charitable alms.  This includes the idle investor who doesn’t labor with his hands, but lives off the wealth generated by the labors of others.

There is a wonderful lady I know who worked hard for many years until she had an accident on the job.  Now she is saddled with terrible pain.  She lives on a small disability check of around $600 a month.  That’s it.  I know people who have car payments of $600 a month.  This lady, as her health permits, donates time to the Church as a Sunday school teacher and she never misses paying her tithing.  A few months ago, an IRS auditor found an error in the withholding in her taxes and they went after her, garnishing her $600 a month wages, leaving her nothing—zero—to live on for a few months.  The problem was she mistakenly claimed the wrong number of dependents on a W-4 form.  That’s the one that, if you do the little worksheet, tells you to take two for yourself, one if you’re blind, one if you’re maried, two for each child if they’re under 8, but three for each one between 9 and 16.  If you’re single and have no children, it’s still easy to fill out that form and end up thinking that you can claim seven dependents.

The total to be recouped by the government was less than $2000, but that left this poor lady with no income for three months.  The IRS wouldn’t think of forgiving the debt or working with her to take it back little by little.  Meanwhile, guys like the Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner owed the IRS $39,000 in back taxes for several years and he still got confirmed by the Senate to head the agency that the IRS reports to.  He had a bunch of cash on hand (or else had some wealthy friends, unlike the lady I told about) and he paid back the taxes with no penalties, no garnishments, no sweat.  What’s fair about that?

It has ever been that way, that the political class looks out for its own while it’s grinding the faces of the poor (Isaiah 3:15).  No matter who is in charge, they manage to write the laws to their own benefit.  If there is government money to be spent, they will position their assets to benefit from whatever the government spends.  As I used to ride along the dirt roads of Wasilla, Alaska, occasionally I’d stumble upon a quarter-mile of asphalt-paved road.  Inevitably, it was the case that a member of the town council lived on that street.  Greed and corruption exist at every level in the system.

So don’t you conservatives talk to me about redistribution of wealth.  It has always existed.  What you’re opposed to is reversing the direction of the redistribution.  I’m for changing the direction.  That’s the Lord’s way.  I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of the ways man has done it for a long time.  How about we try it the Lord’s way and see what happens?

On becoming a revolutionary

I realized today that, at the ripe old age of 52, I’m becoming a revolutionary.  That’s something kind of odd for a middle-aged Mormon man to realize.  It’s not like I have really changed, but it seems like society is changing around me as I hold fast to values that I’ve always believed.  It’s simply the case that those values are becoming revolutionary in their nature.

By the term revolutionary, I don’t mean politically.  I’ve long since given up hope that politicians are going to fix anything.  Neither political party has my interests in mind.  They are all about money and both side exploit the poor and the lower middle-class for their own ends.  The issues have been intentionally divided so that a person who simply wants them to do the right thing can’t pick a side.  I’ve said it before and I’ll reiterate it here.  Why does someone who believes in peace, safeguarding the environment, or making it easy for Mexicans and other immigrants to become citizens have to side with people who want to limit religious speech, promote gay marriage, and abortion?  On the other hand, if someone felt that moral issues, like gay marriage, abortion, and religious activism are extremely important, why should he or she be forced into an alliance with the military-industrial complex, corporate raiders, destroyers of the environment, and those who exploit labor for their own gains?  What if I want to advocate for peace, religious tolerance, protect the environment, promote life, and preserve the traditional family? The ghettoization of the issues is unnatural.  Republicans are pro-life, but pro-death penalty.  Democrats are anti-death penalty, but pro-abortion.  Go figure!  Doesn’t anyone else see the conflicts involved in those two positions.

So, I have decided that I’m just not going to play the game anymore.  I will vote, but my vote will be based on one thing—is the candidate a good, decent person.  That’s it.  Party doesn’t matter.  Platforms don’t matter.  If the guy has all the right positions, but he’s a serial adulterer, forget it.  If I disagree with his positions on several issues, but his life is one of virtue, then he’ll get my vote.  If I’m unable to discern this because of skewed media coverage, I’ll go with my best discernment and reason.  If the Socialist is faithful to his wife and the Republican is a philanderer, guess who will get my vote?

I had a French Mormon explain this to me years ago.  The French are used to dealing with shades of gray.  Things are never black and white there.  I lived in France when Mitterand was elected and I was stunned that the French would elect a socialist.  I figured they were on their way to a Soviet-style state.  Today, France is still there, the Soviet Union is gone.  Back then, when I learned that a French Mormon friend had voted for Mitterand, I asked , “How could you do that?  He’s a socialist!”  The reply was simply, “He was a better man.”  I understand now how that works.

For years, I tried to follow a conservative line, and it worked for a while.  But life kept throwing things at me that I couldn’t fit into a conservative paradigm.  For example, when I got out of the Air Force, I started a business.  The business failed miserably after a couple of years.  I learned that, when a business fails, it’s slow-motion process.  You keep trying to recover and things just slowly spiral out of control.  After you realize that there’s no possible way to dig out of the hole, you end up bankrupt.  That’s a humiliating process.  It takes years to recover from it and it stays with you forever.  It touches your family—even the small children who don’t know what it means.

After our bankruptcy, we sold our home for hardly any profit and moved to Virginia.  It took nearly two years to sell the house in an otherwise decent economy.  After we had done our big moving sale, all that was left in the house was a small phone table and a mattress.  We were going to have closing in two days and drive 5000 miles, from Alaska to Virginia.  When we got there, we’d have to find a job and place to live as quickly as possible.  With a wife and four kids, that was going to be necessary and urgent.  The day after the moving sale, Sandee was sitting on the mattress and stated that she felt queasy.  I asked her if she was feeling ill and she replied that it didn’t feel like “sick” it felt “familiar.”  We went down to the convenience store and bought a pregnancy test—the result was positive.

As we hit the road heading out, with the car packed with kids, dogs, and suitcases, I said, “Well, we’re officially homeless, jobless, and pregnant.  It doesn’t get much better than than.”  After a 10-day trip to Virginia, I managed to find work and a place to live in nine days.  It was miraculous.  However the job didn’t come with benefits and it didn’t pay much, certainly not enough to afford a private health care plan that would cover a pregnancy.  We had to sign Sandee up for Medicaid.  So much for any conservative political leanings I might have had.  We were in the social safety net.  Fortunately, the system worked.  We were able to have our son and rebuild our lives with a lot of hard work.  Nevertheless, there is a debt I can never repay, not only to old creditors who had to write off the money we couldn’t pay, but also to that faceless society that provided the social safety net.

In a way, that taught me more than anything what forgiveness is and what the atonement does.  It does things for us that we can never do for ourselves.  It resets the balance and restores us to be able to function again.  I think that the Lord was teaching me not to be too dogmatic about things that didn’t really matter.  What does matter?  Bearing witness of God’s existence to others who are seeking him matters.  Family matters.  Kindness matters.  Doing good matters.  Not doing harm matters.  Moving forward from where you’re stuck matters.  Getting rich doesn’t matter.  Gaining worldly power doesn’t either.

I shared this one time on a conservative Mormon political forum and I was bombarded with hateful posts from my fellow latter-day saints who have never seen a personal financial failure.  Their lack of compassion and understanding was stunning.  I hope none of them ever had to experience what I did, but if they do, they’ll learn that conservative platitudes don’t put food on the table or keep a roof over your head.  All the principled posturing and debate they engaged in doesn’t matter one whit.  What matters is giving a generous fast offering to the Church, so they can put cans of Deseret-labeled food on people’s shelves, or assist an out-of-work father with a mortgage or electricity bill.

I understand that the scriptures teach that the Lord has his own way to take care of the poor and the needy.  He wants to elevate them and make them independent, but his way of doing it involves humbling the rich.  There is no true, godly way to help the poor that does not involve redistribution of wealth.  Those who have wealth resist this notion and protest that their donations to charity must be voluntary. It’s up to them to redistribute their own wealth as they see fit.  They will find, at some future time, that all they can give is not enough.  The Lord will require it all.  That’s when their test will come—and there’s a high rate of failure for that test.

This brings me to think of my mother, who passed away recently.  I’m having to make my way through the probate process.  She had nothing to leave behind.  A heavily mortgaged home which she bought right before the real estate market tanked a few years ago.  It’s underwater.  It can’t be sold for a profit.  She put a substantial sum of money down, but my sister and I won’t see any of that money.  The bank will take it because the market just won’t make it profitable to sell the home.  Mom’s possessions were few.  She lived an uncluttered life.  Medical and home expenses had caused her to rely on a credit card that she ran up to the limit.  There isn’t enough in the estate to sell to pay it off along with most of her final bills.

So the banks, which received a multi-billion-dollar bailout just a few years ago, will take whatever value is in the estate and leave the survivors with nothing.  It’s not that I want to profit from her death.  The sad fact is that just doing the paperwork for it is expensive.  I had to pay a probate tax on the assessed value of a house from which I’ll gain no benefit at all.  I have to pay filing fees for inventories and other paperwork.  I have to pay for the gas and tolls to go back and forth to a city over a hundred miles away and use up my vacation days at work to take care of these things. I might even have to hire a lawyer to look over the paperwork.

I won’t recoup any of this. Mom’s passing leaves me poorer and the bank richer.  It puts money into the city’s treasury.  The system itself is designed by people with money, to ensure that people with money make more money.  Where do they get that money?  They take it from the labor of poor people.  They take it from hourly wage earners whose labor is undervalued by those who pay for it.  Of course, they call this capitalism and they say the market sets the price of goods and labor.  I say that’s a bunch of bull, because what they do is play one potential victim of starvation or homelessness against another.  No wonder labor will go down to cutthroat levels to survive. Meanwhile, executives and shareholders of multinational corporations pocket the profits, exploit tax loopholes, and jet off to Rio or Cannes.

At the end of last year, when Congress was debating whether or not to extend the Bush-era tax credits, it appeared like the conservatives who were dedicated to their “principles” were going to let the tax breaks expire because President Obama’s bill included levying some new taxes on the wealthy.  The Republicans held out to the last minute, hoping to avoid increasing taxes on the rich.  However, if they didn’t come to an agreement, the tax breaks would have expired.  For poorer people, that would have taken about $40 a paycheck out of their pay.  For people who count their pennies, $40 is the tank of gas that gets us to work for two weeks.  People with jobs still have to go to work to earn the rest of the money so they can survive, buying things that enrich the wealthy class to do so.

So life and experience have taught me that modern conservatism might as well be the Confederacy.  It’s dedicated to propping up a system that grinds the nose of the poor and drains the life blood of those who work for their living. Why the family values voters cling to the Republican “Confederacy” is beyond me.  The revolution that needs to take place is for good people to take back the Democrat Party and run off the nutjobs who think that the biggest threat to the world is melting glaciers and the people who defend abortion rights.  Let’s consolidate the politics by the end result of their dogmas.  Let’s put the pro-war and pro-capital punishment people on the same side as the pro-abortion advocates.  Let’s take the parasitic corporatists who are siphoning off government subsidies for green projects that don’t work and put them in the same parasitic class as the military industrial complex that pays for $900 hammers and then jets the generals off on military-flagged Lear jets to watch the Army-Air Force football game after the conveniently-scheduled Corona Conference.

Last week Mitt Romney “misspoke” when he said he didn’t care about the poor.  Being a fellow Mormon, I don’t think he meant it in that callous way. As a Mormon bishop, I’m sure he wrote lots of checks from the fast offering funds to help the needy, just like I do as branch president of our congregation.  But when I look at his web site and his plan, Mitt doesn’t have much in mind to help the little guy.  He’s Wall Street’s best friend.  I follow his campaign with interest primarily because of his religion and the amazement that anti-Mormon intolerance are still such strong forces in our society.  Other than that, I can’t endorse his plans. Neither can I support Paul, Gingrich, or Santorum.  Yet Obama doesn’t do it for me either, because he’s in the pocket of Wall Street and Goldman Sachs just as much as Romney.

It’s time to kick out the whining, privileged Ivy Leaguers who think they’re making a difference camping out at Occupy Wall Street and sending tweets on their mom-and-dad-purchased laptops and get them doing something that makes a difference, like working in a shelter or building houses for Habitat for Humanity.  It’s time to get rid of corrupt labor union bosses who have mismanaged and underfunded pensions for workers who depended on them, believing they could always muscle a little more money from the government to keep the Ponzi-schemes going.

The revolution I want to see is one of integrity.  I want a revolution that inspires a person to not take advantage of his fellow men and women.  I want a revolution where people drive courteously and give the guy who wants to change lanes a break.  I want a revolution where scientists tell the truth about climate change and not edit their findings to encourage future grant funding.  I want a revolution where people decide that even anonymous blog contents will be civil and respectful.  I want a revolution where the banks and the government feel it’s their duty to put money in the hands of the people.  I want a revolution where the someone’s looking out for the little guy.

In my old age, I’m ready to turn the whole system upside-down.  Some people are talking with anxiety about the possibility of a collapse.  Good, I say.  Let it come.  It will be hard, but not much harder than it has ever been for most of us.  It will be hard on those who have built their castles out of playing cards, hoping they game would just make it another round.  The system they have built is unsustainable and the game is just about up.  When it all comes down, let’s insist on rebuilding something smaller, more manageable, more personal, and more cooperative.  Let’s enshrine work and labor and give it its due.  Let’s restore to the children of the slave and the children of the First Peoples what was taken from them.  Let the idle rich learn to not be idle anymore.  Let him put his hand to the plow, not looking back, because such folks are not fit for the kingdom of God.  Let’s do it right, with justice in mind this time.  If anyone else is looking for fighters for this kind of revolution, sign me up.

US Coast Guard CPOA Judo Club, circa 1974

This is a picture of the US Coast Chief Petty Officers’ Association-sponsored judo club led by Sensei John Peters, circa 1974.  I’m in the back row, third from the left.  Peters Sensei is on the far left in the back.  I was a green belt (sankyu) at the time.