Money

Money

I was watching an internet conversation from a distance last evening. A few people from the church where my family attends were participating in the conversation. I would have loved to participate in that conversation but I am quite certain that my views would have generated a lot more heat than light. The question for discussion was something like this, “Can you name anything that the government can to better than the private sector.” Obviously this was a softball meant for the Republican Party faithful who seem to dominate the Conservative Mennonite Church these days. And, you guessed it; the mindless chatter ensued, as people started hitting the ball out of the park. The most common answer was “I can’t think of anything.” There was one thoughtful person in the group who chimed in with a few things like national security, foreign policy, highway system, etc. The one that caught my eye was the comment, “spending our money.” And then another comment came along, “the government is good at stealing our money.”

That comment did it. It brought me out of retirement. I have not posted to this blog in over a year now. During that time I did not quit writing though. During the past year I wrote the rough draft of my memoir. I had a group of readers that helped me through the writing and some even appeared to be excited about parts of the book. I feel a lot of relief now that it is done. It is long probably over 150,000 words and drags quite a bit. I have given it to a couple of friends to read and they have not responded back. I think it takes a real dedicated soul to work all the way through it.

That comment though, really got to me. “The government is stealing my money.” Whose money is it really? Probably one thing that liberal and conservative Christians agree on: “The money belongs to God.” But my question is serious, and goes beyond the rhetorical. Who controls our interest rates and thus the value that our money holds? What is the name that is printed across the top of our dollar bill and I don’t mean “In God We Trust”? The dollar bill says across its top “The United States of America” of course. The fact is that it is not my money and it’s probably not God’s either. It belongs to the United States of America and I can use it if I want to.

I guess I am willing to say it out loud. I believe that there are many things that our government does better than any of us or our churches can. Until recently the government did a better job of delivering our mail than the private sector, for example. Now UPS, FedEx, and of course the World Wide Web are probably better at delivering mail. But what about Universities where much of the research and development is like throwing money down a hole? Much of the public money that goes into public education is wasted but you never know when a Bill Gates or someone like me will show up. I went to school on a Pell Grant and am now using my accounting education to pay for my own kid’s college education. I did use the public system to finance their pre college education though. What about roads and bridges? What about food safety? What about regulating wealthy corporate insiders? What about regulating oil companies? While most of us care about the price of gas at the pump do we really care about the environment? I think it is a shame that we need the government to do so many things for us. Why do we need such a big government? Are we the people of this great country more driven by greed and more short sighted than we would like to admit?