Hoods Robbing

The Robin Hood legend is a story about an outlaw who robbed from the rich and gave to the poor.  Of course the story depicts the evil Prince John who is not the true king and who at the end of the story is forced to amend his ways when King Richard returns.

Now it is likely that the story actually reflect of historical accuracy in that on his way home from the Crusades Richard was captured in Bavaria and England was forced to pay a ransom that had to be raised by the Prince Regent.

So the release of Richard would have resulted in a reduction of the extra taxes and a return to normalcy.

Now whether this historical fact had anything to do with the legend of Robin Hood is impossible to determine and it is likely related to restrictions imposed on hunting in the "Royal Forests".

However the one element of the story is that he took from the wealthy to support himself and the poor.

Now the more common event throughout history is the wealthy oppressing the poor. The wealthy of course pretend that they then provide some benefit to the poor from their vast wealth, although of course this is simply their charitable nature that shows what good people they are.

Now in a democratic society we like to think that eh Government serves the people, all of the people fairly.  Of course fair is in the eye of the beholder.

Wealthy people always feel that they deserve what they have, even those who were born wealthy.  Now to take what is rightfully theirs and give it to the less fortunate or in their view the less industrious is simply wrong.

They deserve the money and they know how best to use it.  They invest and make the economy grow and provide jobs to "those" people.  They should have to work for what they want and if the pay is insufficient, well they should have been born better.

Now in America you really are pretty much on your own as opposed to most other countries.  We do of course spend more on defense than anyone else, by far, and that still doesn't seem to be enough.

With that much of our taxes going to defense, we don't have enough to provide health care, decent old age pensions or education.  So borrow what you need and pay it back to wealthy people with interest.

An educated population is both a great asset to the nation and a great danger to the wealthy, so we need to saddle them with obligations that keep them in their place.

We don't want to be like those socialist countries in Europe where people get things handed to them, we need them to struggle, fight in our wars and survive as best they can before they are forced to live on inadequate old age benefits with unaffordable health bills.

I don't see much of Robin Hood in all of this, more like the reverse, or Hoods Robbing.