Why Does Atheism and Left-Wing Politics Usually Go Together?

[TaraJo]

Who cares, money doesn't make you happy anyway. Those rich kids who's lives are so easy aren't any happier, in fact some evidence suggest they are significantly less happy, than their middle class counterparts. Besides, anybody who bitches about poverty in the United States needs to travel to other parts of the world. Then you realize that the poor in this country are not really poor after all.

Well, no, once you get past the basic necessities, money doesn't really buy happiness. However, those basic necessities have been being threatened lately. Remember all those people being evicted from their homes when the housing bubble burst? Medical costs are headed in the same direction; I have a friend, Amy, whose family didn't make enough for medical insurance and her husband died because he had throat cancer that he couldn't get treated. Nobody is going to be very happy if they're sitting there on their death bed because they can't get throat cancer treated.

But there's another level to it. See, I want to see wealth tied to a persons productivity simply because I think we can accomplish more that way. Yeah, those rich kids are pretty well off and they're never going to have to lift a finger to keep on top. What if they didn't? What if they had to work hard and produce and put new ideas into the marketplace in order to maintain their privileged position? I want to see more production from the top levels of industry and new innovations from them and I think they can do it if they had the right incentive.

However, this conversation seems to be the key difference I notice between most Libertarians and Republicans. Libertarians preach the good of a free market while the Republicans try to keep pushing trickle down economics. I can respect the views of the Libertarians, even if I don't agree with them. Republican economic policy that relies on supply side economics has not worked. There's a very important difference between the two.

Personally, I'd like to institute more libertarian policies, but first we have to reduce the power and influence of corporations. I fear that if we simply reduce the size and scope of the government without doing that, corporations will become the defacto government and they'll be a fuck of a lot harder to control than our government is now.