Reinventing Robin Hood

My son and I have been reading the original Robin Hood from time to time (it's a bit of a rough read aloud for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the level of bawdiness!).

Early in the book I discovered that the whole "taking from the rich to give to the poor" sense of Robin Hood that we all grew up with has been seriously distorted. Robin Hood was really all about returning to the poor who had been exploited what was rightfully theirs.

So, in all that year, fivescore or more good stout yoemen gathered about Robin Hood, and chose him to be their leader and their chief. Then they vowed that even as they themselves had been despoiled they would despoil their oppressors, whether baron, abbot, knight, or squire, and that from each they would take that which had been wrung from the poor by unjust taxes, or land rents, or wrongful fines; but to the poor folk they would give a helping hand in need or trouble, and would return to them that which had been unjustly taken from them.

Not that I'd recommend we go about dealing with things the way Robin Hood and his band of men did, but we've got companies making record profits, productivity levels are at all time highs, and wages are stagnating. The average worker is losing ground in our society, and a society that has the kind of extreme inequality we've been trending toward ends up ripe for unrest or worse.

I certainly don't advocate for equal outcomes--some inequality can be motivating. But I do advocate for a more balanced economy and a fairer playing field--extreme inequality is demoralizing and destabilizing.

We've got large and growing segments of our society that work their fingers to the bone and have very little to show for it (in some cases, why wouldn't they opt for welfare?). In the meantime, our cost of living goes up and up (cities have minimum lot sizes and minimum square foot requirements for homes, access to technology is increasingly essential, etc.), pushing more and more people to the margins. They have to take on two or three jobs just to make ends meet, never mind get ahead!

Something's got to change. And we're either going to be ahead of it--making conscious, constructive choices--or we're going to be paying for it in painful ways. Far more painful ways than dealing with union negotiations or with a measly 3.5% marginal tax increase, up from the lowest tax rates in my lifetime.