Post B084AWBvbRfaIna3No by wmbean@www.minds.com
 (DIR) More posts by wmbean@www.minds.com
 (DIR) Post #B084AWBvbRfaIna3No by wmbean@www.minds.com
       2024-02-27T06:46:58+00:00
       
       1 likes, 0 repeats
       
       It has been awhile since I lasted posted an editorial or something like it.   There are many subjects I could opine upon and all of them worthy examples of the ills that plague us.  But perhaps the one value or principle of human existence is the Rule Of Law, for without such a principle or core value we chained or subjugated to the will of others, notably those who can and will exercise power over us for their own gain.  The fact that the exercise of such power is irrational and even illogical never occurs to them.  Case in point is the idea of mercantilism as an economic policy.  Erect stiff tariffs to keep one's society from buying goods and services for outsiders while hoarding vast sums of gold in both government and merchants' vaults and one has crippled the flow of money or currency within one's country as well as inhibited the flow of goods and services among other nations.Almost all nations or societies rely on a consumerist led economy.  We buy the goods and services we either do not or cannot produce for ourselves and in doing so provide the need for both commercial investment and public works spending.  There is nothing magical about this process.  Money is the exchange medium that is preferential to barter, it's cleaner and more effective.  It also leads to the accumulation of capital through savings by both consumers and businesses.  But capital comes at a cost, the value of a dollar today is less that the value of a dollar tomorrow.  This is basic human behavior, the principle of delayed gratification.  The violation of this principle comes at a cost.Well one might ask what this has to do with the rule of law.  Policy, whether it is government, corporate, of personal comes  at a cost, a matter of choices, tradeoffs and not answers or solutions to perceived problems.  We like to believe that laws are sacred things and must be black and white, must delineate the differences between good and evil, between right and wrong, that edge upon which we believe we live upon.  If one is of a more conservative frame of mind then rule of law tends to be more black and white.  If one is a liberal, then rule of law must encompass that warm fuzzy feeling that there are at least fifty shades of gray between black and white.  And instead of trade-offs there are a million excuses tp behavior.The original Declaration Of Independence referred to the right to property (the possession thereof) but that phrase didn't sound quite right.  We must remember that the locals in the colonies were not, on average, men of property and wealth.  And of course women were subject to the rule of men (husbands, fathers, even brothers) and blacks were subject to the rule of their owners.  But for the man of no wealth or property, the wage earner, what was left for him as a right?  Ah, the pursuit of happiness whether it was the accumulation of wealth and property or just the simple good life as an honest man living in accordance with his religion.  The pursuit of happiness raised above the mere physical world that included wealth and property, it gave us an avatar to live for.But let us talk a moment about equity, that idea that men and women and even children should have equal access to wealth and property regardless of whether they worked for it or not.  Income disparity is an ugly phrase that assumes all else be damn that no one should have more than anyone else.  But income equality is not a law that is violated, it is an emotional assumption about everyone being equal in all ways.  Show me where this type of equality is carved in stone, where the laws of physics decree that this is the law of the universe.  Show me where income inequality violates any rule of law,What undermines the rule of law is government policy.  Back in the 1920s the Republicans were complaining that the laws enacted to give state, county, and municipal bonds tax exempt status (and thus a lower interest rate or coupon rate for such issuers) reduced revenue to the federal, state, county, and municipal governments.  The strange truth about tax cuts for the rich is that in the end, lower tax rates produced more government tax revenue.  Why should that be?  Because for the wealthy individuals the ability to keep more of their investment gains meant that they would move away from tax exempt investments and into long term capital gains where they could keep more of their profits.What conclusion can we draw from this example?  Policy often trumps or interferes with the rule of law, it encourages the wealthy to petition their government representatives to "rig" the game in their favor.  Yet in doing so, this constant interference reduced the ideal of the rule of law to a museum piece, a relic of non modern society.