Money is Cheap
I have been a Facebook member since the Covid lockdown in 2020 and have been impressed by the large number of Facebook bloggers who identify as Democrat-Socialists, who want the government to tax the wealthy in order to increase revenue to spend on the poor. I include the logos of some of the most tendentious bloggers I have encountered.
Some of the leftist bloggers recommend the guillotine for the most wealthy in our nation, or feeding them to killer whales. The appetite for vengeance rivals the violence of the 1789 French Revolution. They demand retribution for the greed of the wealthy, a radical distribution of wealth. Much anger stands behind their demands.
In the context of an organized government's administration of goods and services, however, the actual money is the cheapest component. As the government increases the scope of its services, it spends more on bureaucratic administration and expansion than it does on services to the poor.
Second to labor-costs are concrete things like buildings and computers, and organizational things like logistics and networks, so that not so much remains of the programs' funds to reach the target people in the programs. The result is that, as an interest-group or voting bloc, the government's own employees outrank the poor in influence.
Republicans should learn a few things from this situation. They should emphasize that they can get more money to the poor than the Democrat-Socialists can. Realistically speaking, the poor are more interested in money and power than in equality and inclusion, so you move away from that kind of salesmanship. If Republicans utilize the late Milton Friedman's idea of a computer that does nothing but print and mail government checks, they can deliver wealth to the poor more easily and cheaply, bypassing bureaucratic middle-men.
But I understand the problem with this plan, namely that It's not just about the money! For poorly-informed, back-against-the-wall poor, the government needs to show a caring face—no matter how insiders react to the "caring face" as a cynical contrivance. If the poor catch onto the deception, they might prefer an anonymous bureaucratic face, one that does its job and doesn't demand anything in return. In reality, the government face transitions into a paternalistic face, but skilfully to cover the credibility gaps in its actual administation.
Finally, with the ascendancy of the Trump administration in the American leadership, and the bitter opposition it has unleashed, Americans should recognize that we have a reached a crossroads in our corporate life and in the collective environment that we share. We cannot postpone much longer the need to make strategic changes in the make-up of our nation.
In the mind of a strategic thinker like myself, if the President has accomplished nothing else, he has delineated truculently the divisions in our society, between the Democrat-Socialist goverment of the Left and the Capitalist-fueled government of the Right. Half of the nation voted for Trump; the rest hate his guts. So the disunity, and frankly hostility, unfairly dampen an American's perception of the future. If we want America to continue, we have to discredit the needless negativity that so affects our perception of things, and we can only do that by dividing the U.S.