In a speech at a Virginia college, President Obama said, “I want to live in a country that’s fair.” Now who could disagree with that? Certainly not most of those college students, who, if they are like most young people, are easily stirred up with indignation toward any injustice, because they still believe that life can be fair.
But life experience tends to teach most of us that there are simply too many variables for life to be remotely similar for everyone, much less “fair”, whatever that means.
About the most it can mean is that we all start with as level a playing field as possible. Of course it won’t be level, because heredity, IQ, physical prowess, gender, race, culture, attitude and many other factors do much to determine our chances of success and happiness in life, so there can never be a truly level playing field. Civil rights legislation of various types seeks to ensure that people aren’t hampered by prejudice regarding surface things like race, gender, disabilities, etc., but no law can equalize the chances of one person with bottomless drive to succeed and another without an ambitious bone in his body.
Of course Obama’s main concern is with people who have more money than other people, but, there are many reasons one person may have more money than another. The most obvious reason is that some people don’t have a goal of becoming rich. The irony is that many of those same people think it’s not fair that they aren’t rich, even though they did none of the things one must do to become rich. Becoming rich is hard work, and most people who are rich have also been under soul-crushing poverty during their rise to the top. In short, it ain’t easy. Even some who try to get rich, ultimately fail.
But many people who have taken the easy 9-to-5 job don’t seem to realize that and think they should receive the same rewards as someone who risked everything and expended their blood to build a business that might someday make them rich (Few people become rich working for a salary; just a few upper management types. Most of the rich got there by starting businesses. Not everyone has the stomach for that)
Obama’s idea is to take money from people who have it and give it to people who don’t. This, he thinks, will make the country more “fair”. But I couldn’t disagree more, since taking money at gunpoint from one person who earned it “fair and square” (so to speak) and giving it to someone who did nothing except “need” it, seems profoundly UNFAIR.
