[Part I introduced the birth and decline of the Scottish Widow Fund, now completely secular and not growing as it used to. Go here to read his original, unedited post of which the following is a condensation.]
The Fund’s initial success in taking small amounts of money from lots of simple people and taking care of their families had profound impact on global politics. It tempted politicians to imitate it and turn entire nations into welfare states. This political attempt began in Germany with Otto van Bismark’s social insurance legislation in 1880 and soon spread to Europe, USSR, Japan, and the USA, both by the so called “Right” and even more by the “Left,” that is, by Socialist or Communist parties.
Politicians thought the idea was good: the state will take wealth from those who created it and use it to take care of everyone from cradle to the grave. Taking citizens’ wealth was, of course, easy. Governments, however, are not structured to use other people’s money to create wealth. Unscrupulous and arrogant rulers use public funds for their glory. They waste money even if they don’t actually loot it. The worst part is that when a welfare state seems to succeed, it destroys citizens’ character. It even erodes morality, society, and the economy in unforseen ways.
Take Japan, for example. It took the concept of welfare state farther than any European nation.
So if the state is going to take care of you from birth to death, why would you take the trouble to bring up children and nurture your own family? Japanese did not lose interest in sex … and the idea of a secular welfare state took away the need to harness sexual energy to build families that will produce and nurture children. As a result, Japan’s population has been declining. That means that the number of citizens who will work and pay tax is diminishing. That is unsuitable for states’ welfare programs that are ponzi schemes, dependent on more and more people working, earning, and paying taxes to support retired people and those who no longer have the ability or willingness to hold down a job.
Governments of Europe and America have followed the same folly: the welfare state undermined the Ten Commandment that required children “To honor your father and mother.” Mothers began to abort their babies, fathers began to abandon their wives and children in favor of other women, and taking care of the elderly became the responsibility of the state. This gigantic social experiment to live without God’s law is backfiring now since the so-called welfare state has replaced the “Protestant work-ethic,” that created the modern economic miracle with a secular “Entitlement-culture.” This culture believes that citizens (and illegal aliens) have the right to this, that, and the other but no corresponding obligation to create wealth to look after themselves, their families, and their neighbors – especially widows, orphans, refugees and other poor.
India had and has mathematical genius, but our culture lacks a spirituality that promotes the creation of wealth and a passion to use wealth to love our neighbors as ourselves. We have now learned western mathematics and their application to economics, but in order to move FORWARD we also need to avoid the follies of western secularism and discover the forgotten spiritual secrets of Western civilization.
– condensed from Mathematics + Spirituality = Development by Vishal Mangalwadi
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