How would

your life change if someone suddenly handed you a million

dollars? (Those who are already millionaires will have to

insert whatever dollar figure would make their eyes light

up).

If the

experiences of many lottery winners are indicative of how

most of us would handle such good fortune, your life

would change, not for the better, but for the worse.

I don't

have anything statistical, but I've read more than a few

accounts of those whose lives have been made miserable by

the unexpected infusion of large amounts of cash.

First,

their former friends come with hands out wanting loans or

outright gifts. Failure to comply is seen as stinginess.

Even if they "forgive" you for not being more

generous, your friends tend to drift away because they

can't afford to go where you can go and do what you can

do.

If you keep

your job, coworkers resent you for taking a job from

someone else when you don't need one. If you retire

without having some really good outlets for your creative

energy, boredom eats at you and alcohol and drug problems

are definite possibilities.

Move to a

nicer neighborhood and you're looked down on as nouveau riche . Stay where you

are and the snobbery works in reverse.

A lot of

people who find themselves in this situation end up

penniless and miserable after blowing or losing all the

money, I'm told.

Now, in

case you were thinking about giving me a few million,

please don't hesitate. I am positive that, unlike most

people, I would be able to make good, responsible use of

new-found wealth in creative ways that would provide

plenty of fulfillment. Really.

Seriously,

though, I can't help thinking that those who are so bent

on redistribution of the wealth in our society should

consider the frailties of human nature.

Suppose we

took all the unencumbered wealth in the country and

distributed it evenly among the population. There are

only about 300 million people in the U.S. now, right? And

there are hundreds of billions of dollars lying around,

so I'm sure it would be extremely conservative to guess

that each person would get at least a million bucks.

So why

don't we do it? Just take it away from the rich and give

it to the poor and not so rich.

If you

agree with the current administration's basic approach to

financial issues, then I can't think of a single reason

you would object to doing just that.

There is no

difference between that approach, for instance, and

giving a tax cut to people who don't pay taxes. (What

really steams me up is that it's conservatives in

Congress who came up with the tax cut for the taxless

idea, to appease President Clinton and make it harder for

him to veto their bill... and it was pointless because it

didn't even work.)

The basic

concept of any welfare program is redistributing money

from those who earned it to those who didn't. And no,

liberals, giving a tax cut to people who actually pay

taxes is not the same as a welfare program. Being allowed

to keep more of the money you earned is not the same as

receiving money that someone else earned.

In spite of

all this, I'm not opposed to all welfare programs. We're

a compassionate country and, yes, I do believe that there

are circumstances under which it's all right for the

government to use its enforcement power to exact taxes

from the majority of us in order to improve life's

prospects for a few of us.

But that

doesn't include the current insane, enslaving welfare

system that keeps people beholden to the government (and

therefore under the government's thumb) for generations.

It's

tempting, though, to contemplate a true redistribution of

wealth. Just this once, we would say, we will give

everyone an equal start. Every single man, woman and

child gets a million, two million, 10 million... whatever

the math works out to be. For children, we would hold it

in trust until their 21st birthdays so nobody could blame

future poverty on their parents.

We all know

what would happen. The only question is how long it would

take for pretty much the current distribution of wealth

to reestablish itself.

One further

thing I can guarantee. In five, ten or 20 years when a

whole new poverty-stricken group of Americans had

emerged, they would find a way to blame it on somebody

else.

It's just

human nature.

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