The Poor and the Rich

I once heard someone say that if businesses were run more like a family and families were run more like a business both would be better off. This sounded good at first but after thinking about it a while I realized something. That something was that if families were run more like a business they'd realize just how much a business is already run like a family.

Money management is the key to the success of both. People have no idea of how to manage their money. A successful business is guided by a budget. How many families have a budget? I would hazard a guess that not many do. And, in my opinion, this is what separates the rich from the poor. If the working poor were to place themselves on a budget and only spent within the guidelines of that budget poverty would be nearly eliminated on its own.

It isn't so much about the amount of money you earn that determines how poor or rich you are, it is how you distribute the moneys you earn that does. The rich are rich because they have unearned income. The poor are poor because they only have earned income. And as long as the poor rely on earned income alone they will remain poor.

And all of the government programs for the redistribution of wealth in the world will not change this. Governments cannot create wealth, it can only deny wealth to the people through regulation and taxes. And taxes are paid to take care of the needs of government not the needs of those who pay in the taxes.

A man once told me that he felt that every person has a right to a college education even if the government had to pay for it. Well, I say that every person does not take advantage of the education that the government pays for now. In fact there is a growing movement by parents to take their children out of these state run schools. So, why should it pay for something more than it already does?

It was this same man who said that he acknowledged that happiness was not guaranteed but he qualified that by adding that it was the duty of everyone who attained happiness to ensure that everyone in the world attained it also. I'll leave it up to you to understand how something not guaranteed to anyone can be ensured to everyone.

But, of course, there was a time when an act of pity was rejected also. It was a declaration that man would not accept being looked upon or treated as a victim. It makes me wonder who it was that turned this nation of people who had a can do attitude into a nation of people with a can't do attitude. It is the person who has a can't do attitude that is a victim of life for they have had their spirit killed. And those who preach that attitude are the killers of spirits.

We have become a nation where a standard of living is the most important thing in a person's life. We no longer realize people need to make adjustments to that standard at times. It's as if they are afraid of starting over again when the unexpected occurs. It is as if the need to start over again declares you a failure in life rather than recognizing it as a very real part of life. People are afraid of the word failure these days. Failure is an inevitable part of life. It is how you deal with failure that is the real determinant of whether or not you are a success.

Life is filled with rich people as it is filled with poor people. It is how you measure it that is the difference. There are those who you might think as being very poor yet they would consider themselves the richest people on earth. There are those whom we'd think as being very rich yet they'd consider themselves as impoverished. How rich one is or how poor one is can only be dependent upon what a person values most. That is something no man can decide for another nor should he have the right to make that decision.

So, for you who think that taxing the rich and giving it to the poor is being charitable, remember this. You may be taxing the poorest of this nation and giving it to the richest. You are determining for another what he should value most. And that helps no one and hurts everyone.