Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn:
Retrato de mujer joven (Portrait of young woman)
(1634)

"Are we smart enough to share?"

The United States is not the most prosperous nation in the world, not by a long, long shot! Depending on the referenced index, the US ranks between 15th and 40th, despite its clearly enormous economic scale. It falls far short when it comes to equity. I might characterize Prosperity as a society’s capacity to transform income into social benefit. Our United States clearly wastes much of our income on the social equivalent of candy and gum. We seem to do this for all of the usual, truly terribly good reasons. We say we want to avoid socialism while forking over fortunes to industries that should have long ago become self-sufficient, like our poverty-stricken petroleum industry. Indeed, Texas would be another Mississippi were it not for Federal transfer payments made to industries there that could be profitably making their own ways. We purchase our penury at a personal premium. We each more or less contribute. Those most capable of contributing, by longstanding tradition, contribute a much lower percentage of their income and wealth than do the rest of us. This is not by any means Prosperity in action.

In practice, Prosperity might have little to do with wealth.

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz