Meaningful Returns

Look. I can’t answer that question for you. No one appointed me anyone’s conscience but my own. Fiscal/monetary policy is important, and the striving for good policy–while heavily subjective–seems like a worthwhile striving.

But you know I think and talk and write a lot about artificial poverty. And, in the end, artificial poverty is simply the avoidable elevation of money over humanity. It might be your humanity, it might be your family’s humanity, or it might be humanity at large–a humanity which has a staggering number of people in actual poverty.

So sure, go ahead and look at the economic research–there’s lots of it and even the legitimate stuff is WIDELY varied and good luck coming to a solid conclusion from it. But here’s a caution: there are a lot of people for whom voting with their wallets is simply code for “protecting what’s mine,” or “I’m scared as hell,” or “poor people are lazy.”

And you know what? That’s artificial poverty. It’s placing the value of you and your property at a level higher than the worth of other humans. Don’t do it.