Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

The Rich Freggiaro Cycling Blog is mostly going to spend the next 100 days of election frenzy on the sidelines. I have too few readers to risk losing any of them in a vain attempt to influence their preference.

But once in a while a pull quote from one of the candidates amuses me so much that I can’t resist commenting. Here is wisdom from the Land of 10,000 Lakes:

“One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness”.

I have a long running political issue with the North Star State. Ever since 1984, when 49 states managed to realize that they were much better off than they were 4 years ago. President Carter told us to turn down the thermostat and wear a sweater and lamented our ‘national maliase’. President Reagan gave us ‘a shining city on a hill’ and urged Gorbachev to “tear down this wall”. 49 states were convinced.

Even earlier, HHH became the first Democrat (actually DFL’er, look it up) to manage to lose the Southern States that had voted for the Donkey ever since the Civil War. His policies were very tame by today’s standards, but too far left for the Dixiecrats of the day.

You wouldn’t think that a state of walleye fishermen, deer hunters, iron miners and lumberjacks would swing left, but there is a long tradition of demi-socialism in the Gopher State. I blame the Lutherans. I went to Sunday School and Confirmation at Saint Paul’s Lutheran Church in Lodi, where many of the congregants had deep midwestern roots. Anybody remember The Dakota Picnic in Lodi? A major event with polka dancing to accordion music, beer and bratwurst for an entire weekend at Legion Park.

Midwestern Lutherans are almost universally decent, hard working and honest people. If a neighbor gets sick and bedridden they are quick to come to their aid with a hot dish and a snow shovel. Because they know their neighbors would do it for them. They think the world is full of kind and decent people who only have problems because of bad luck, not bad choices. So they offer help.

And, bless them, they somehow have the idea that the GOVERNMENT should do the same thing! “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” as Dr. Marx put it. Except instead of a hot dish, the State redistributes wealth, taking from people who have more of it and giving to folks with less of it. And like all middlemen, keeping a significant chunk for themselves. Government agencies don’t come cheap.

Consider Stoker and me: we think that we worked hard and saved and invested carefully and have some measure of economic success. Because of this our marginal income tax rate is approaching 40%. And some of this money is finding its way to ‘forgive’ student loans. Or pay for cell phones for people entering the US illegally. Or pay for DEI training for those self same government agencies who do such an effective job.

Dr. Marx’s maxim doesn’t take into account the very poor choices some people make and then expect the government to help bail them out. Our 40% tax bracket is almost confiscatory, but since it leaves Stoker and me with more than we ‘need’ I suspect we will be facing a little more mandated government ‘neighborliness’ in the near future.