Redistibution of Wealth- I'm confused

Today’s newspaper contained a column written by Tom Scarritt, editor of the very conservative Birmingham News. He was commenting on a recent debate  between the candidates running for governor of Alabama, Robert Bentley and Ron Sparks. Sparks is in favor of a lottery to fund scholarships in the state; Bentley is opposed.


Here’s an excerpt for that column: “…remember government has no resources except what it takes from us. There is no such thing as government funding; there is only the redistribution of your money and mine.”

Statements like that irritate me. Terms like “takes from us” and “redistribution of your money and mine” have become catch-phrases of the right, implying that we, the taxpayers derive no personal benefit from government: that our money is spent solely to take from the rich and give to the poor. Such statements don’t seem to take into account that often when we leave our homes (many of which were bought with insurance backing from the federal government) to drive our children on roads funded in part by the federal government, to schools that receive federal funds, we do so without thought to the services our taxes are providing to US and our families. We have roads, schools, libraries, hospitals, small business loans, insured bank accounts, police and fire protection and a number of other benefits paid for by our taxes. So when it comes to taxes why do we continue to hear people using terms like “redistribution of wealth” as though the only people to benefit are people other than ourselves? We are paying for valuable services for us and our fellow citizens so that we all benefit.

On the other hand, in the marketplace, when we pay money for a product and/or service, the price has been marked up to cover not only the cost of the product or service, but the costs associated with the sale and marketing of that product/service, plus a salary for the owners and a return to the shareholders who invested in that product or service. We are paying more than the actual cost of what we’re  receiving. I don’t have a problem with that, as long as the mark-up and profit margin are reasonable. For years businesses told us they weren’t able to make a profit because labor costs were too high, so they laid off their labor force, moved their operations elsewhere and boasted how much less their production costs were now. But for some reason, prices didn’t go down- we ended up paying even more for many products (unless we shopped at WalMart, which is the subject of another blog, later). So it turns out we were paying to cover not only the necessary and reasonable costs of providing the product, but also to pay large dividends to stockholders and obscenely large salaries to corporate executives. But to Mr. Scarritt and those with similar views, that is NOT considered a redistribution of our wealth. I just don’t understand.

Mimosa Musings

Living in Alabama as a child during the 50s, I spent summers playing with friends, barefoot and outdoors. One of our favorite pastimes was playing house. We would find a large patch of bare ground, usually under a tall, shady tree, then we’d haul in sticks, stones, dead leaves and whatever else we could find to lay out the outline of rooms, leaving gaps to serve as doors. The daddy, when he wasn’t off at work, usually stayed in the living room, reading the large leaves that served as a newspaper. Few of us girls wanted to play the daddy, and it was next to impossible to get any of the boys to play with us, so we just pretended he was away at work or on a trip. The mother stayed in the kitchen, cooking and fussing at her "children." or primping in the bedroom or entertaining her friends in the dining room. We sat and slept on pine straw sofas and beds and swept the floor with branches. Sometimes we were lucky enough to build our houses around a big flat tree stump or large flat rock. This wonderful architectural feature would serve as a table upon which we served pretend meals on leaf plates. In late summer, a staple of these meals was a pile of English peas still in the pod. In actuality, the “peas” were pods from the mimosa trees that grew all around us. It never occurred to us to eat any of the food we served, which is a good thing, since mimosa seeds contain a neurotoxic alkaloid that can poison cattle, sheep and dogs who ingest it. Besides, none of us liked English peas anyway, and usually had to be forced to eat them at home. Which may be why we enjoyed playing with pretend peas and discarding them, uneaten, without being fussed at by mothers who instructed us to clean our plates if we expected to eat dessert.

I’m reminded of those childhood summers every time I look out the back door and see the huge mimosa growing in the woods behind our house. Its limbs arch almost 40 feet high and nearly as wide, overhanging our fence, filling the air with the fragrance of its fuzzy pink flowers, and dropping seeds that pop up everywhere. And that’s part of the problem. The mimosa (Albrizia julibrissin) is one of those trees people hate or love- sometimes both at the same time. I love to look at it, with its delicate ferny leaves and those fragrant fluffy pink blooms that attract hummingbirds, butterflies and bees. But I hate to pull the lebenty zillion little mimosa seedlings that pop up in the flowerbeds, veggie beds and a hundred other places they don’t belong. And when those pretty pink flowers turn brown, die, and are washed loose in a rain, they cling tenaciously and refuse to turn loose from whatever they land on, leaving ugly brown stringy wads on everything, including the chicken run fencing, the bush beans, the tomatoes, etc. Then there’s the fact that the mimosa is yet another of those imported species that has become invasive and is now threatening native flora.

It’s hard to drive past any open or wooded area along the roads and highways here without seeing mimosa trees. They seem to be everywhere, but the mimosa is not used as a landscape plant in the South as much now as it was during my childhood. One of the reasons it has fallen into disuse is that the mimosa is extremely susceptible to several diseases, including mimosa wilt, caused by the fungus Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. Perniciosum, a devastating disease that has almost eliminated mimosas in many areas. Once infected, a mimosa may die within six weeks. Perhaps this is a case of Mother Nature intervening to remove the threat to native species. Who knows? I don't know how long we'll have the mimosa as a neighbor before it succumbs to disease or is cut down by developers. In the meantime, we'll continue in our love/hate relationship. I'll enjoy its beauty and complain about its pestiness. I might even make a mimosa soap, I can see and smell it now....