U.S. Social Contract Being Broken

When I was high school I was very involved with Lincoln Douglas Debate (less you consider me just a nerd I also played football and baseball) and studied philosophers such as John Locke and Thomas Hobbes in preparation for the debates. One thing that always stuck with me was John Locke's social contract. It was sort of the heart of my last letter for my fund when I talked about trust in relation to currency. This is a very interesting write up sort of talking about the unraveling of that contract through the greed actions of Wall St and those in Washington who don't pay their taxes until they come under scrutiny. It is a very good read.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/02/hardly_the_best_and_brightest.html

Most historians agree that earthquakes, droughts or barbarians did not unravel classical Athens or imperial Rome.

More likely the social contract between the elite and the more ordinary citizens finally began breaking apart -- and with it the trust necessary for a society's collective investment and the payment of taxes. Then civilization itself begins to unwind.

Something like that has been occurring lately because of the actions on Wall Street and in Washington, D.C. The former "masters of the universe" who ran Wall Street took enormous risks to get multimillion-dollar bonuses, even as they piled up billions in debt for their soon-to-be-bankrupt companies.

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Meanwhile, we are learning that the brightest and best-educated Americans at the highest levels of government simply refuse to pay their required taxes. Yet because the IRS audits a tiny percentage of taxpayers, voluntarily compliance with our tax code is the glue that holds together a sophisticated society and separates it from a failed state.

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The result is the same. Our best educated, wealthiest and most connected in matters of finance proved our dumbest -- and our political leaders were less than ethical in meeting their moral responsibilities as citizens.

If ordinary Americans were to follow the examples of Wall Street and Washington elites, the nation would neither collect needed revenue nor invest its capital. All that is a recipe for national decline and fall.