Michael Lissack we are speaking of a few years. Yet, our children are our destiny. In the public world they have almost no voice. And they are not alone. During the past fifty years the politics of our society has shifted greatly into the realm of redistribution. What started as a concern for the poor, the elderly, and the infirm has been shifted to concerns for the wealthy, the well connected and the well organized. We are not given the opportunity to vote on the extent of the redistribution nor its targets. Bill Clinton stated in his campaign that he would impose more of the burden on the rich, when were we told that he would also shift more of the benefits to them? It is rare in America for politicians and public officials to be upfront in stating that some of the goals are redistribution. Those who have are to share the spoils with those who are described as having not. What is even rarer is for these same public officials to acknowledge that the important verb is “described” -- our system works to redistribute to those whose claim is artic- ulated and recognized. It matters not if that claim is real, or if the redistrib- utive goal has ever been endorsed by the populace supposedly being served. Most troubling though is the corruption that accompanies the efforts to redistribute. The math behind this corruption is simple - most redistrib- utive programs cost each of us only a little so for any one of us to object to the “skimming” is not particularly worthwhile. In the aggregate what is skimmed, the increased costs, the misdirected subsidies, the missed oppor- tunities cost each of us several hundred if not thousands each year. But that is the aggregate. For any individual program, the cost to any one of us may be only a few dollars. The benefits, however, to the skimmers to those who are profited from the missed direction is great. Thus efforts at vigilance are lop- sided. Those who benefit do so greatly with each individual program, those who pay -- all of us -- pay significantly only when all things are considered. So with what seems like little at stake we fail to object. Redistribution as a policy means that money is moved around. The parasites I referred to are in the business of getting their hands on some of it. That we allow such skimming to occur -- that we condone the theft - makes it very difficult for well meaning public officials to take strong stands against it. The thefts that occur are not mostly motivated by a corrupt public official
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