billybud wrote:Reagan was rich most of his life...living his final years of dementia on a palace of a ranch.
I am more concerned with the fact that the avarage retiree from the state of Florida has a retirement of less than $18,000 and insurance payments of $6,000 per year.
Rich people can afford to have a different ideology...one former rich lady is quoted as saying..."let them eat cake"....the Reagan of her age.
These are real problems. The Republicans deny there are any problems, the Democrats see a problem at every turn.
The idea of rich people having a different...the French quote implying indifference to the poor, ideology is the essence of the discussion of Aristotle and Plato. Plato speaks of the degenerate regimes after having spent considerable time describing an Aristocracy. Aristocracy in the classical sense is not rule by the few, or rule by the wealthy. Aristocracy for Plato meant rule by the virtuous. The ideal city would be ruled by a Philosopher king, but because no philosopher will want to rule in the city there must be a handful of virtuous individuals willing to rule, or a democracy. Our problem is we elect unvirtuous people and a lot of them.
We have failed in this country to understand the legitimate role of government is these affairs. There is, in my mind, a very simple litmus test if government should be involved. It is this. If the citizenry are taxed, then all citizens need access to the function for which they were taxed. E.g. Roads, everyone is taxed and everyone has access to roads, just obey a few rules and you can use them. Parks, fire department, police, armies all give benefits to all citizens. These become legitimate functions of government.
When we start taxing for special interest groups then we become corrupt. Virtuous leaders would not tax the poor or the rich to benefit a special interest group.
Because we tax we often artificially accelerate functions that would be best evolving more slowly. That allows ethics and morals to keep up the pace. It means we may not have all the inventions we now have, but at least we would not find ourselves with a health care that is superior to any place in the world and a delivery system that is absolutely broken.
We have people living much longer than when the current system(s) were designed and never address what needs to be done to correct this. (Our current system worked well when people retired at 65 and died at 75)
The simple answer is to elect virtuous people. Lord Acton said, "Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right to do what we ought."
The complex answer is to find virtuous people that will stay that way.