Morality at Play: Dirt Poor Filthy Rich

Not necessarily in direct political discussion, I have been told by more than one person that "redistribution of wealth is immoral." I;m trying to figure this one out and be a bit less tongue-in-cheek than I normally am. I'm puzzled by these words coming from my facebook friends. Somewhere someone made this a mantra in opposition to Bernie Sanders' policies. My friends who own businesses scream it isn't fair to support the poor, to pay taxes for things like fire departments and noteably

• had no problem contributing to the Real Estate bubble which stole millions from citizens and left them without homes.
• encourage speculation on common goods (utilities in the market) knowing that the speculation creates artificial price jumps in products that people need to perform adequately in the work force (gas).
• think that there is nothing wrong with moving funds off shore to avoid taxes. If the loophole is there take it. 
• applaud the chairmen and CFOs of companies who take jobs away from lower tier employees so that the largest of shareholders take more money home. 
• put profit about safety, personal, community and planetary.
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You see everything that is being done to ruin the economy is completely legal. Mostly. That offshore thing is a grey area in many cases. The letters of the law protect people who are taking away funding from schools, wages from workers and in fact taking jobs away from workers for the sake of the people at the very top of the financial food chain. It is all legal. It's all part of "doing business". But is it ethical?

Is it ethical to cheat on a test when you know the teacher is out of the room and can't catch you?

Is it ethical to give a loan to someone you know will default on it just so that you can make extra money from fees? Knowing that those extra few hundreds is going to cost a family a home?

Is it ethical to take resources from the ground with a toxic process when there are free resources available, but developing the tech is inconvenient?

Is it ethical to steal intellectual work from someone you know can not hire a lawyer to defend themselves?

Is it ethical to steal any thing at any time?

Is it immoral?

Yes. Theft is immoral.

Is it immoral to get people to play a game based on a set of rules and then change those rules when you start to lose? Yes. Yes it is.

Is it immoral to take back what was stolen, even if it was done to the letter of the law?

I don't think so. The economic rules change to suit the people who have the most influence over law makers. And they change those rules to steal from people who have less than them all the time because the margins aren't big enough to suit them. The rules that have changed to legalize corporate theft are immoral.

How is taking your own money back immoral?

The Social Security program has been taking money from me every paycheck of my life. And they take it with the promise that I will get it back. It is a weekly loan to the Federal Government. As with any loan it needs to be paid back. Not only do they not want to pay out on those loans they've taken out. they want to cut out the program entirely. But I will still have to pay that money in some other tax because they don't want to give up my 1200.00 a year. And the 1200.00 of millions of other working class poor. They want to privatize services, and continue to run the government they way it always has been run, spend money on military contracts that don't produce what was promised but they don't want to spend the money we give them to take care of the community on the community. That is theft. That is immoral.

Taking back what someone stole is not immoral.
That is all this movement wants. We don't want to lose the regulatory aspects that we have because a private company will charge exorbitant amounts to do nothing. And there will be no recourse for the public. Once chosen they are in. We want to make enough and keep enough of what we make to pay the rates of "the company store" for our food and shelter. We shouldn't have to work 40+ hours and still be in danger of losing a home, a MODEST home. We have seen this kind of thing play out in our own Industrial Revolution and that of Europe.

When they start chanting Make America Great Again they are talking about going back to the era of the Industrial Age. The Industrial Age: the frenetic culling or resources, scraping mountains down to hillocks and building grand cities on those hills, armies of dirty workers paid peanuts and risking life and liberty in the pursuit of Industrialists' happiness, Golden Age gilding which created the lifestyle of the rich and famous. The problem with the people who want to make America Great again is that they aren't talking about everyone being great. They aren't gong to allow the poor the same defenses they poor had in our Industrial Era. There are already laws against home gardens in many places through out America, 6 states where it is illegal to collect rainwater, 6 governors supporting an air tax (tax on the cubic feet of atmosphere on your property between the ground and Space), The CEO of Nestle doesn't think that water is a human right and there are American legislators who support him. Why else would Nestle be allowed to build a plant in downtown Phoenix to bottle MUNICIPAL water? Any way that those of us at the bottom of the ladder could freely save ourselves and be independent of the system is being legislated away from us. Our safety nets are disappearing.

In making America Great Again what they are really talking about is Making the American Industrialists great again. It is the re-establishment of the Capitalist Aristocracy, a return to the LifeStyles of the Rich and Famous. The rest of us are getting to comfortable. The rise of the McMansion has made them nervous. And none of them gives a crap about how well the rest of us do. The 3rd and 4th generation removed from J.P Morgan and Jacob Astor can't build or innovate so they are going to steal it like Edison stole his empire. Those who want to innovate are being mocked and run out of business or run underground. Their tech is stolen and hidden. Theft is the path to greatness for these people.

So again, how is taking back what was stolen immoral?

Because two wrongs don't make a right?

Shocker, if rewriting the rules to steal from others is just "business" and it isn't immoral for them to do it then rewriting the rules to steal it back is just "life". It can not, by the logic of the 1%, be considered immoral because that is just the way it is. They only consider it immoral because it would be happening to them instead of us. And it is immoral to them because it isn't them doing it.

Dirt Poor. Filthy Rich.  It's all  the same game.