The line between comfort and greed
IN AN ironic twist, I was staying at a luxurious golf resort on a magazine assignment when John Edwards ended his campaign for president. Ironic because, whatever his failings, Edwards was the only major presidential contender in the last 40 years who talked consistently and passionately about the poor. On the day of his announcement, the headline on my computer read "Edwards Suspends Campaign: Emphasis on Poverty Never Caught On."
At the golf resort, a gorgeous oasis of heated pools and palm trees, breakfast for four cost $103. One of the bathrooms in our suite was as large as my daughters' bedrooms at home, fitted out with Italian marble, Jacuzzi tub, and a television.
Places like these are little precincts of paradise. The food is succulent and abundant (raspberries in winter, Kobe steaks); the spa treatments and attentive wait staff all intended to make you believe that discomfort has been rendered extinct. For a guy who grew up playing on weedy public courses, there is something unforgettable about walking a manicured links designed by a famous architect and having a caddy lug your bag, read your putts, and take a washcloth to your club after every shot.
Last week, staying in more modest accommodations while still in the warmer part of the country, I tuned into a radio talk show host who was discussing the economic stimulus package. "I work very hard," he said, "and my family and I are lucky enough to be among those who won't be getting a check, families with an income of more than $150,000." He went on to say how it seemed foolish and unfair that he was being excluded from the government's generosity. "I'd be one of the people who'd actually go out and spend that money, really help the economy," he complained, "buy something, instead of just paying off credit card debt."
That afternoon, out for a stroll, we treated our daughters to a $4 dish of ice cream at a mall where the windows were bright with
A few hours later, I watched John McCain on TV, giving a strong speech. He was making the point, certain to be a centerpiece of his campaign, that the government shouldn't be entrusted to spend our money. In other words, taxes should be minimized - a classic Republican argument for keeping the economy strong.
I'd like to agree with his argument. As a former State Department employee, I know how inefficient the federal workplace can sometimes be. Having spent years living in a communist country, I've seen how government-imposed equality sucks energy from both ends of the spectrum, pampering workers and paralyzing investors. Also, as my own income has increased, I've noticed that it's become less and less pleasant to write that check to the IRS every April.
Into my thoughts has crept the idea that, having worked two and sometimes three jobs at a time over the last 30 years, I deserve my modicum of success, and maybe those who haven't worked as diligently, or didn't risk as much, deserve their poverty.
But in clearer moments that kind of thinking seems like one of the great temptations of the better-off classes. A failure of humility. An absence of gratitude, humility's cousin. It seems to me only half true that my family and I deserve our modicum of success, and also half true that people of wealth should be left alone to spend their money as they see fit.
What I've seen in the last few weeks - Bentleys and Maseratis cruising past the street people and slums of the south - reinforces my belief (a fundamentally, though not uniquely, Christian belief) that while it's essential to preserve the incentive of upward mobility, it is both morally repugnant and socially destabilizing to encourage too wide a gap between the working and investment classes, the poor and the rich. More than any other single factor, it is government policies - the philosophies and actions of the people we elect - that determine the size of that gap. Amid the hurricane of words that is a presidential election, I will be thinking about those differing philosophies, and about the line between comfort and greed. I will be remembering John Edwards, a millionaire many times over, who kept talking about the American poor.
Roland Merullo's latest novel is "Breakfast with Buddha."
