Manna from the Trees

Just last week in this posting I was complaining about how Republicans had taken catch phases I was using like ‘family values’ and ‘my friends’ and wrecked them by overusing and misusing them. Now Senator McCain has revived a new catch phase that I can use. It is ‘spread the wealth’. Senator McCain uses it to imply that Senator Obama is a “socialist” (as if that was a bad thing) or that he would raise our taxes. In reality our federal income tax system, since its creation to pay for World War I, was a progressive system — the more you make the more you pay. Actually, all Obama is hoping to do is to restore it and get rid of the major tax breaks the very few rich have gotten the last eight years, and give the tax breaks to the 95%. However, the truth, it does not really matter in this case. What matters is that “spread the wealth” is a wonderful phrase for the way it should be.

For those of us who are Christians, Muslims or Jews, we are taught that if we have more than we need we should share it, spread the wealth, with persons in need. In the African culture it is expected that if someone has more than they need they will spread the wealth to those in need. Spreading or Sharing the Wealth is a basic value of our American society, although we seem to have forgotten it.

Nature certainly knows how to “spread the wealth”. Today while my neighbors were raking leaves into the street for city pickup I was raking them out of the street for the compost pile. The trees spreading their leaves on the ground is like dropping ‘manna’ (food) on the ground. We can take these leaves, good carbon ingredients, for the compost pile and make new soil and grow food with them.

What is wrong with socialism anyway? From my past trips to Venezuela, England, France and Holland socialism seems to working out better in many ways, like with health and basic human needs, than capitalism or communism. When we were in Amsterdam in the 90’s we took a bike ride in the main park during the day. We noticed a lot of persons in the park on a workday. When we returned to where we were staying we asked the owner about this. He said that every citizen in the country was given enough for basic needs of food, shelter and health. He explained some persons were happy with just the basic needs for life and thus could spend their day in the park. Others, like him, who wanted more, worked. He had no problem with this system and neither do I. One of the areas I need to add to my web page Risen in Venezuela is about the success of socialism in that country. Spreading the wealth has had some good effects.

Spreading the wealth is the way of nature and the way of many major religions and of governments. I say “bring it on.”

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