[Buddha-l] Wealth and excess

[Richard Hayes]

On Thu, 2009-01-15 at 11:18 -0700, jkirk wrote:

> However, I still go with the Middle Way view of wealth. There is
> excess, and excess gets people and things into trouble.

Looking at the matter as the Buddha allegedly did, there is nothing
inherently unhealthy or unskillful in a society in which some people
have an abundance of wealth. I don't recall him ever saying that it's
more difficult for a rich man to attain nirvana than for a camel to pass
through the eye of a needle. According to what he is supposed to have
taught, when a society becomes ill is when some people are allowed to be
in such a state of poverty that they lack the means of making their own
livelihoods honestly. Widespread poverty is a possible but not a
necessary consequence of some people having a great deal of wealth.

One feature of American society that has been making an increasingly big
impression on me recently is how utterly incompetent the justice system
has been for most of my life, especially since 1980 (the beginning of
the Reagan era that may or may not come to end on January 21). People
living in conditions of poverty who have recourse to crime often end up
in prisons for very long sentences (by far the longest on average in the
industrialized world), but in prisons only a handful have the
opportunity to learn trades or skills or to get an education that will
help them when they get out. As a result, the recidivism rate is
ridiculously high. On the other end of the economic scale, wealthy
people tend to get much lighter sentences. And of course many of the
people who really deserve most to be behind bars are never even
investigated, let alone tried and convicted. (What do you reckon the
odds are that Bush and Cheney will get their just desserts?) Until this
imbalance in justice is addressed, the USA will, I fear, continue to be
more of a hell realm than a land of exemplary dharmic conduct. 

-- 
Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico