Surely, We Already Have Enough

Near the end of the presidential campaign, Obama made a statement about "spreading the wealth around". McCain hopped on this right away, and accused Obama of being a socialist.

This seems to be an old battleground in American politics: Democrats favoring equality, and Republicans favoring opportunity. A Republican argument might be that we should do everything to favor entrepreneurship among our people, so that we can make the whole pie bigger; lower taxes will incentivize risk-taking; higher taxes discourage it. Democrats perhaps somewhat more concerned with how the pie gets divided up; take from the rich; give to the poor.

It occurs to me that we, at least in America, already have enough, as a nation. Do we need to make the pie bigger? For what purpose? It seems to me that our pie is big enough by now...we don't need more "stuff". What we need is to do is to work towards:

• Ensuring that it is divided more equally, so that everyone has their basic needs met (food, shelter, clothing, jobs, education, medical care).
• Changing our consumption and savings patterns so that:
• .....We spend what is needed on stuff that is essential (all of the above listed items)
• .....And spend less on stuff that is not needed (oversized cars, oversized houses, etc)
• .....And invest more on moving towards a life-style that is sustainable for us and for our planet for the long-term.