CET 2025 Slot 5 · Verbal – Page 5

TO EACH WHAT SHE DESERVES

The second plan we now have to examine is that of giving each person what she deserves. Many people, especially those who are comfortably off, think that this is what happens at present: that the industrious and sober and thrifty are never in want, and that poverty is due to idleness, extravagance, drink, betting, dishonesty, and bad character generally.

They can point to the fact that a laborer whose character is bad finds it more difficult to get employment than one whose character is good; that a farmer or country gentleman who gambles and bets heavily, and mortgages his land to live wastefully and extravagantly, is soon reduced to poverty; and that a man of business who is lazy and does not attend to it becomes bankrupt.

But this proves nothing but that you cannot eat your cake and have it too: it does not prove that your share of the cake was a fair one

It shows that certain vices and weaknesses make us poor, but it forgets that certain other vices make us rich. People who are hard, grasping, selfish, cruel, and always ready to take advantage of their neighbours, become very rich if they are clever enough not to overreach themselves.

On the other hand, people who are generous, public-spirited, friendly, and not always thinking of the main chance, stay poor when they are born poor unless they have extraordinary talents.

Also, as things are today, some are born poor and others are born with silver spoons in their mouths that is to say, they are divided into rich and poor before they are old enough to have any character at all.

The notion that our present system distributes wealth according to merit, even roughly, may be dismissed at once as ridiculous. Everyone can see that it generally has the contrary effect, it makes a few idle people very rich, and a great many hardworking people very poor.