Sometimes misleading arguments come attached to really pretty things, trying to catch their audience with their critical thinking guards down. This came through my mailbox recently with a lovely story about the Bentley Speed Six, a car introduced in 1928. In fact, the fair body of the mail is available here – enjoy the great lines of the car! (I’d put it in my garage, except it’s bigger than my garage.)
Now we move on to the hookworm (or lamprey) attached to the mail. I’ll reproduce it and then point out its errors:
A guy looked at my Corvette the other day and said, I wonder how many people could have been fed for the money that sports car cost.
I replied I am not sure, it fed a lot of families in Bowling Green, Kentucky who built it, it fed the people who make the tires, it fed the people who made the components that went into it, it, fed the people in the copper mine who mined the copper for the wires, it fed people in Decatur IL, at Caterpillar who make the trucks that haul the copper ore. It fed the trucking people who hauled it from the plant to the dealer and fed the people working at the dealership and their families.
BUT,… I have to admit, I guess I really don’t know how many people it fed.
That is the difference between capitalism and welfare mentality. When you buy something, you put money in people’s pockets, and give them dignity for their skills. When you give someone something for nothing, you rob them of their dignity and self worth.
Capitalism is freely giving your money in exchange for something of value. Socialism is taking your money against your will and shoving something down your throat for which you never asked.
I’ve decided I can’t be politically correct anymore.
Unfortunately for this chap, the money he spent on his Corvette didn’t go to the PTSD-afflicted war vet sprawled in the alley, sleeping off his drunk. It doesn’t go to the woman born without arms, the construction worker with pancreatic cancer, the boy with brain cancer, the infant born with a bad heart to the former coal miners who never had the opportunity to retrain.
But that money does go, in very large part, to the executives at GM, executives who make millions of dollars a year, and yet clamor for their tax breaks, for the muzzling of the EPA, for the unions to go away. Why? Because of the mindless clamor of their shareholders. All those hungry hands, held out for the dollars of the car buyers. It ain’t going to the workers.
It’s all very self-satisfying to speak of robbing someone of their dignity, but when that dignity was robbed by society OR Mother Nature (sometimes a cruel, cruel joke), it rings very, very hollow, and speaks to the immaturity of the writer. We do not band together into societies just so we can grow crops and make stuff and trade it with each other, driving out the weak and elderly and unfortunate out into the cold to die lonely deaths.
We come together to protect and care for each other. Mistaking free enterprise or socialism or authoritarianism as the purpose of society is to make the mistake of thinking roads exist so cars can drive on them.
No, they exist so people can travel more conveniently, whether it’s a Corvette, a Tesla, or a horse drawn carriage.
Fortunately, neither participant in this imaginary scenario, annoying as both may be, realizes that we’re not playing a zero-sum game. What this means that we’re a rich enough society that we can buy Corvettes and take care of OUR unfortunates. Remember that phrasing, because it’s very important – from that infant with a bad heart to the veteran who’s thinking of suicide, they are all OUR people, black or white, straight or gay. Not THE unfortunates, but OUR unfortunates.
It may not be as sexy as funding our war machine, but it’s more important.
And, speaking as a free-thinker (the 19th century term for an agnostic or atheist), it seems to me that a good alternative phrase for welfare mentality might be Being Christian. Maybe I’m wrong, but it sure seems like the best Christian message has always been Love Each Other. And that includes the helping hand.
