Other People’s Money

January 15, 2005

I watched a movie that had the title, Other People’s Money, with Danny Devito as a sharp Wall Street businessman who made his fortune by using Other People’s Money. It was a summary of the capitalistic system in which we operate here in America. For all of our flaws, and there are enough to go around, our capitalistic system is by far the best. The rest of the world has tried various forms of socialism and they have all failed.

Next week there will be a Presidential Inauguration held in Washington D.C. George W. Bush will be sworn in for a second term and following that ceremony there will be all manner of celebratory parties. According to most news sources those festive parties will cost about 40 million dollars. That is a lot of money to spend on parties; however, since the money has been donated from the private sector it really is none of my business how much they spend. I get a mildly annoyed when I see how much money is spent to pay for professional athlete salaries, Hollywood movie stars and similar outrageous expenditures. I know how hard I have to work to make a living, much less a fortune to squander on exotic sports cars, wild parties or a vacation home in the mountains.; but its not my money so I shut up about it.

I heard a spokesman for the Democratic Party ranting on about the wasteful spending issue for all the Inaugural Parties as if it were taxpayer’s monies being wasted. ( Did I say Ranting?) “That money could have been spent to fully equip the military, put proper armor on every Hummer that is in harm’s way, feed the orphans from the tsunami, rebuild towns and on and on. About the only thing left off was that line my mother used on me when I would try to skip over my broccoli. “Young man, there are starving children who are dying and you want to throw away good food.”

The government has figured out a way to get a good portion of my money to pay for some fairly extravagant stuff; stuff that I would not have raised my hand up and boldly asked to be a part of, funded programs to find out the sleep habits of homosexual monkeys who have recently been shipped from one zoo to another where the walls are a different color, things like that. I may have exaggerated a bit; but you get the point. Millions of tax dollars are spent on pork barrel projects to make some congressman or senator look good to his constituency. These are dollars that I have some say in, not a whole hell of a lot; but at least I have a vested interest since they are tax dollars. The money spent by some wealthy political supporter is not any different than watching how much money is spent to put on the Super Bowl Half Time Show; with or without clothing malfunctions. So go sit in a corner and shut up about how much money some Republican wants to spend while celebrating the fact that George W. Bush got elected and John Kerry didn’t.

It’s Saturday and I just finished waxing my BMW Z3 Coupe, a car I bought just for date nights and going to church on Sunday. My wife and I can go to a nice restaurant, do some shopping at the mall and maybe take in a movie. That will help the economy, help pay for some movie stars decadent life style and I will leave a tip for the waiter/waitress so they can enjoy the capitalistic system too. This will be done with money that the government has yet to figure out a way to confiscate from me so they can give it to some more deserving and less fortunate citizen. With some more hard work I plan to build a small vacation home in Colorado, that is unless I have to pay the government some of my tax dollars to provide shelters for the homeless, buy them a car and feed their twelve children who live under the bridge and hold out a collection can while wearing a sign that reads, “Two Stupid 2 Git a Jub, Pleze Hilp Uz!”.