A politician, like you and me, can be generous only with his own money. A politician spending other people’s money is, at best, implementing sound policies – and, more realistically, much closer to a burglar who “generously” uses part of his booty to buy rounds of drinks for his buddies.
Cafe Hayek: Who’s Generous?
Don Boudreaux wrote the above on the Cafe Hayek blog on the 7th of February. Obviously, there was some sort of back-and-forth at the Baltimore-Sun, especially with all the posts that follow that, frankly, seem to have nothing to do with the letter itself.
I’ve pretty much decided that while I care about politics, I don’t care enough to blog about it. However, while this is somewhat political (especially with all the comments), in truth, this really should be a pretty good observation.
Whether the public trough or the church’s through, one cannot be generous with what isn’t one’s own. In the church, this causes a lot of tension. We in the church say that all Creation is God’s. That being the case, can we truly generous if it is God’s? Or is this saying that something is God’s is someone’s idea of getting people to tithe?
Just something to ponder.