How much is enough

My opinions on political and economic resolutions to what is wrong in our societies may surprise some. I am thoroughly convinced that fairly consevative fiscal efforts can be combined with fairly robust social programming and a lot more can be accomplished for all the people all of the time. Most of my interest lies in Canada of course and any 'social' programming one risks suggesting south of the border will probably be met with rampant and rabid hatred. Damn commies! One has to find a way to sneak it in on them; tell them it's a cookie or something.

I started thinking about this and about my headline for this because I just watched Warren Buffett on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Don't get him confused with Jimmy Buffett' they're totally different kinds of pirates. Warren comes across as this kindly old curmudgeon that one could imagine sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner with and he'd wear one of those porridge colored cardigans with leather elbow pathches and a plaid shirt. Grandpa Buffet is, some say, the richest man on the planet. Whether that is actually true is really difficult to determine simply because he is so rich it becomes difficult to calculate just how rich he is. He is definitely in the 1% of the1% of the 1%.  No wonder he's so happy, right? But wait kindly old patron, along came America's economic collapse and the creeping socialists of the White House want you to pay more tax! (cue dramatic upswell of music)

Now, still with me? Do you recall a rock band from way back in the 1980's or even maybe the late '70's out of Ireland that became really big hits for awhile there? Apparently, they're still filling concert halls. U2 they call themselves. At one point and possibly still because it's another thing difficult to track, but nevertheless they were considered the biggest rock group on the planet. Yeah, remember those guys? Cool names like Bono and the Edge.Then along came, now I'm really showing my age, Napster! The evil bad guy of the music industry. (cue dramatic upswell of music again!)

Then, of course, because I'm on my successful people roll, there' the indefatigable Mr. William Gates, this guy took the second best product in it's industry and sold it to the entire world, youngest billionair ever until that FaceBook kid came along,and there's some debate about whether he's going to stick or not. Back to Gates, while compiling his multi-trillion dollar empire, Bill found out that most of the children of the world are hungry, don't have medical care, stuff like that and decided he might be in a position to do something about. Him and the Mrs. tired of playing on Windows.

Here's the thing:Buffett, (accursed traitor to his elitist brethren) told the whole world a few weeks ago that of course anyone who makes the kind of money that he does should pay more tax and it would bekind of crazy for the American government to not tax them more.

A few years ago, the entire music industry was up in arms about Napster stealing artists' royalties by scoring all the free downloads. Bono said 'good for them if they want to download U2's we've made plenty" Then, he went off to join Bill....

Yep, Gates, that Bill, who along with his wife has decided that they are going to keep giving to the needy until it's all gone. That's their commitment, at least that's what it said in the TIME magazine I read. Microsoft keeps making things, paying him his share, and he can just pass it around.

Now, here something I know, economic models, free enterprise or socialist are designed around capitalism, that is controling the production of the society. Capitalism is based on greed. Neither system works and Keynes has always been on pretty shaky ground. What will it take to get economic modelers, 'job creators', political leaders and the captains of industry and commerce to follow leads like theirs? How much is enough?