Government is for losers. Exactly!

In this post from October 2010, I wrote about a golden rule from India: the "dharma" of a rich person is to create a lot of wealth, and to donate wealth to charity.

The old Indian wisdom recognized that creating wealth is not only ok, but is the duty for some.  But, what comes after that wealth .... something like the "noblesse oblige" in the Western contexts.  Here is one:

संपदो जलतरंगविलोल
   यौवनं त्रिचतुराणि दिनानि ।
शारदाभ्रपरिपेलवमायुः
   किं धनैः परहितानि कुरुध्वम् ॥

- सुभाषितसुधानिधि

Wealth is as temporary as a wave on still water. Youth is just a matter of few years. Our life it self is as uncertain as a cloud of Sharat month (where clouds could get formed and dispersed in a matter of minutes. No rain.) What is the use of all the wealth that you accumulate? Spend them in a way that is helpful to others.

That golden rule is from way back in time, well before the modern concept of countries and governments.  In those bad old days, with wealth and power concentrated with a few, while the overwhelming majority toiled away, charity helped, and helped a lot.  Perhaps charity also helped in the small geographic areas within which the rich and powerful lived.

Now, the rich and the powerful have international reach.  But, our collective problems are way beyond the neighborhood.  Take climate change, for instance.  No amount of philanthropy can tackle that kind of a challenge. Or public health in these times when infectious diseases can easily spread not merely within a country but also across countries.

Philanthropy is no match against the machinery of the government.  However, for the government to address these challenging collective issues, well, the rich and the powerful need to pay up.  And for them to pay their share Republicans need to first acknowledge that our collective challenges, like climate change, are for real and are not some elaborate hoaxes!

If they acknowledged these collective challenges, then they would automatically realize that individuals and charities cannot fight carbon, for instance, and that a well-funded government will be needed for such huge campaigns.

For now, the head in the sand racist party can only keep chanting "tax cuts".

Writing in the NY Times, gazillionaire Eli Broad argues:

I’ve come to realize that no amount of philanthropic commitment will compensate for the deep inequities preventing most Americans — the factory workers and farmers, entrepreneurs and electricians, teachers, nurses and small-business owners — from the basic prosperity we call the American dream.

He continues:

I invite fellow members of the 1 percent to join me in demanding that they engage in a robust discussion of how we can strengthen a post-Trump America by reforming our tax code.

But, the racist party and their Dear Leader that 63 million voted for, which loves to associate with the far-right, will perhaps merely associate Broad, who is Jewish, with their favorite target, who is also a big time philanthropist--George Soros.

Let's see what happens in November 2020.