The Fear of Wealth Transfer

I have recently arrived for my summer vacation on the island of Nantucket.
One of the most striking first impressions in the couple of days I've been here is the extent to which society has been polarised. The warring camps carry on two ideological monologues essentially not listening to one another and blaming the other side for the deadlock.

I am equally taken aback at the vehemence with which Obama is attacked. The Right ranting that he is anti everything they stand for, and the Left whinging that he is not being aggressive enough and not achieving the miracles they expected of him.

Yesterday I heard him being chastised for being a "real Socialist" although I am not quite sure what the tag socialist entails but I think it has to do with the concept of wealth transference.

Wealth transfer seems to be the chant of the day, or more clearly stated, chants against wealth transfer appear to be the current theme. In a discussion today with an acquaintance he explained to me that there was a wealth transfer taking place all over the U.S. and then gave as his prime example the situation at private American Universities.

His rationale was that (apparently) 50% of the students at private universities receive some sort of financial aid and the funding for such aid comes out of the "excess" tuition being paid by students who pay the full rate.

He did go on to say that a wealth universities such as Princeton the tuition charged is actually about a third of what the university actually spends per student so I was left a little confused just where he was going with the example. I think the message was that there was already enough wealth transfer taking place and we didn't need the government to manage/increase the transfer.

I guess this is sort of a case of perspective. The basis of profit is essentially a question of a transfer of wealth from the buyer to the seller. I know my friend is all for profit- for the record so am I. I think however that he would have difficulty in describing profit as a form of wealth transfer-he is much more in the wealth accumulation camp.

I know he would defend his view that he wasn't really against wealth transfer as long as he got to make the choice of how much and to whom. Yesterday I received a phone call looking for money to support the Nantucket Firefighters. Today I got a call from the Massachusetts Fraternal Order of Police, also looking for money.

I guess those tax cuts have an effect on our basic public services.