It's Poverty Alleviation, not "wealth redistribution"
We need to be careful with the way that we frame political dialogues and what words we use:
When people talk about âwealth redistributionâ, theyâre not talking about stealing or âredistributingâ money from (hardworking) rich people to the (lazy) poor, theyâre talking about making sure their tax dollars arenât spent on anyone else but themselves. Itâs about greed, and not the greed of the poor, the greed of the rich. They indignantly say that not a single dollar of their taxes can be spent how they donât want it to be spent, and that means it canât be spent on anything that doesnât directly benefit them.
But thatâs not how societies or governments work. We have a representative democracy, youâre not always going to get your way. And government collects money from the individual in order to provide services for the commons and the common good. Everybody loses some money to the masses, but makes it up in an elevation of societyâs quality of life.
The rich believe that they can keep their money from the government and use it to buy themselves an island away from the problems of the world that produced the wealth they enjoy, and this is factoring into the budget negotiations. Cutting spending isnât about balancing the budget, itâs about making governmentâs spending only fund programs for the wealthy ( i.e. tax cuts). In fact, the wealthy manâs greatest conservative, Reagan, didnât balance the budget at all, but he did cut taxes for the rich.
