Posted on 09/19/2017 10:51:16 PM PDT by aquila48
"Any attempt to equalize wealth or income by forced redistribution must only tend to destroy wealth and income. Historically the best the would-be equalizers have ever succeeded in doing is to equalize downward. This has even been caustically described as their intention. “Your levellers,” said Samuel Johnson in the mid-eighteenth century, “wish to level down as far as themselves; but they cannot bear levelling up to themselves.”
And in our own day we find even an eminent liberal like the late Mr. Justice Holmes writing: “I have no respect for the passion for equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy.”1
At least a handful of writers have begun to recognize explicitly the all-pervasive role played by envy or the fear of envy in life and in contemporary political thought. In 1966, Helmut Schoeck, professor of sociology at the University of Mainz, devoted a scholarly and penetrating book to the subject, to which most future discussion is likely to be indebted.2
....
In the envious the thirst for social advancement is insatiable. As soon as they have risen one rung in the social or economic ladder, their eyes are fixed upon the next. They envy those who are higher up, no matter by how little. In fact, they are more likely to envy their immediate friends or neighbors, who are just a little bit better off, than celebrities or millionaires who are incomparably better off. The position of the latter seems unattainable, but of the neighbor who has just a minimal advantage they are tempted to think: “I might almost be in his place.”
(Excerpt) Read more at mises.org ...
The last line bears repeating: “A government that pays social blackmail will precipitate the very consequences that it fears.”
Envy is the root human sin that is at the foundation of liberal, progressive, communist, socialist, Democratic thinking. It empowers all that they promote.
The result is Cuba and Venezuela. In both countries, the populace voted for their own present condition, believing the lies of Marxism.
So in a sense, and to some degree, they are reaping what they have brought upon themselves.
At their core, both Judaism and Christianity reject and condemn envy - the 10th Commandment. And yet, to a great degree, they both practice it extensively (the “Prosperity Gospel”), thus being hypocrites.
Many of our government practices and laws are the implementation of envy. Until this is stopped, the collapse of our nation is inevitable. i.e., the national debt cannot continue forever........
Envy is a far worse vice than greed because you can use envy as a tool with virtue to satisfy your own greed in the “virtuous act” of stealing from other people legally....
Envy is its own self-serving, conceited.... virtue...
Which is why Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, and all other redistribution schemes need to be ended now. Not phased out. Ended. Ended now. On Social Security and Medicare? You are not being paid from an “account” you accumulated. Your payroll taxes were used to pay recipients back then. And you are now living off the taxes ripped from your children at the point of a gun. It has to stop.
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