Posted on 04/23/2015 1:51:25 PM PDT by Kaslin
Democrats think they have the issue of the 2016 election: income inequality. The theory is that so few Americans control so much of the wealth in the country that the rest of us, the “99 percent,” will rise up and demand “fairness.” It’s jealously, plain and simple. And its success, as much as there has been, is based on ignorance.
Bill Gates is worth more than you or I ever will be. Actually, he’s worth more than you, me, and pretty much everyone we know ever will be. But he’s not rich because we’re poor. In fact, we’re not poor at all.
Gates made his money, created it. Before Microsoft existed the value of Microsoft didn’t exist. It was created and grew from nothing, or a relatively small investment. It also grew from hard work and a risk. Gates left Harvard to start the company; he didn’t rob a bank, he bet on himself, his vision and ability. And he won.
Unless someone literally stole from someone else, no one is poor because someone else got rich. That appears to be a difficult concept for many to understand, particularly the “social justice warriors” who obstruct traffic demanding their slice of other people’s pie.
But they do understand it; they just hope others don’t. The chanters against the “1 percent” play on the ignorance of their misguided flock. That ignorance runs deep.
That it is fiction that you have less because someone else has more is but one basic concept people should have learned in school. Thanks to the Democratic Party’s indentured servitude to teachers unions, such basic concepts have been replaced with sensitivity conditioning and diversity training.
The idea that Mark Zuckerberg being worth $34 billion means you were denied your slice of that pie is absurd (unless your last name is Winklevoss or Saverin). That a political party, or any decent human being, would perpetuate that lie is worse.
It’s not often I’ll quote an actor to make a political point, at least the actual actor and not the character he played. But I recently heard something I think captures the American spirit, or what it used to be, so perfectly that it is worth repeating.
The actor is Terry Crews, star of “Brooklyn 99,” and while talking on Adam Carolla’s “Take A Knee” podcast, Crews talked about how he became the successful man he is today. Crews told Carolla, “Everybody says they’re trying to get their piece of the pie. They don’t understand that the world is a kitchen. You can make your own pie.”
That is true, to one degree or another, in most corners of the world. But it is truer in the United States than anywhere else. Yet one political party, aided by the media, is committed to convincing millions of their fellow Americans that they can’t get ahead, that “the deck is stacked against them,” or “the game is rigged.” Nothing could be more un-American.
Democrats and the media obsess on “income inequality,” but outcome inequality is the real plague of America’s poor.
Everyone has access to an education – Equality.
Wealthy Democrats deny Americans the ability to choose which school their kids attend, but they can and do afford excellent private schools for their kids – Inequality.
The greatest barrier to economic mobility is education malpractice, and those screaming “inequality” are the ones building and reinforcing that barrier.
No one should want income equality, or anything close to it. The only societies where income was anything close to equal were the most despotic in history. The Soviet Union, communist China, Cuba, etc., all enforced the concept of “equality” down to the income level. It quashed the human spirit and the entrepreneurial spirit – and the only people who achieved upward mobility, the only people who got rich, were those who imposed the income equality.
Everyone is equal…under a boot.
The fact is the “rich” today won’t necessarily be the rich tomorrow, and the same goes for the poor. The discussion is always framed as the rich vs. the poor, but it’s never mentioned that neither group is stagnant. Whether someone moves up or down that scale is up to them. The chances they take, the effort they exert, the work they do are all bigger factors in someone’s economic future than anything a politician can implement. Unless, of course, that politician implements a program designed to alleviate “income inequality.”
North Korea has the lowest income inequality on the planet – one man has everything, millions of others have nothing. In this country, similarly situated individuals are making the case we should be more like North Korea. OK, them first. If these millionaire progressives are really interested in “spreading the wealth around,” then write me a check. If the check clears, we can discuss the concept further.
Equality comes from “THE MARKET”.
You get paid what you are worth without interference from government.
If you are worth more you can get a higher paying job.
If you can’t get a raise and can’t get a better job then you could be paid more than you are worth.
“THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213 th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.”
I've said before that personal income is itself an outcome of one's education, value, and effort.
But we are getting poorer. Real wages have stagnated for those that still have jobs, but many have lost jobs and 100 million Americans are on food stamps now.
The problem is that we lowered the import tariffs and let every the excess labor in every third world country compete against the Americans worker. And the products of that labor is still sold into the American market not the foreign markets.
So what's happening is that the American workers are losing their jobs, and the Americans that still have jobs are buying the cheap imports, which enrich countries like China, while creating the incentive to for those countries to undermine even more American industries.
We need to raise the import tariffs and put American workers back to work.
I have two sisters, both strong Dems, who've become millionaires in total wealth working for one of those terrible, exploiting American corporations. Do you think they'd understand how they became so rich?
They do not. They think if we could get rid of greedy, white males, everything would be much better. I just laugh at them and ask them who they think built the structures allowing them to make all their money.
I urge you to visit nationalreview.com and read Kevin Williamson’s latest article about the Chinese and our trade policies.
Yes the Democrat Party’s message is and has been “the game is rigged.”
But a more important fact that goes unreported is that the Democrat Party under Obama has become more than ever the Party Rigging the Game.
Obama is the Rigger in Chief. Obama is the King of Crony Capitalism.
Obama is in the business of rewarding his friends and punishing his enemies.
Since his first day in office his administration has been all about rigging the game.
The bankruptcy proceedings of GM is the most glaring example of Obama rigging the game in favor of his friends and punishing his perceived enemies that I can think of at the monument. Perhaps others will add to the list.
arpaio update....judge snow’s wife
azcentral 4/23/15]
Arpaio said he that he had come into the possession of an email from a tipster who said he had met Snow’s wife at a restaurant, and that she said Snow “wanted to do everything to make sure I’m not elected.”
The only reason that income inequality may be a Democratic campaign issue in 2016 elections is the following imo. Regardless that the the states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate income equality, the corrupt, citizen-elected Senate is not only going to predictably work in cahoots with the corrupt RINO-controlled House to pass an unconstitutional, vote-winning income equality bill, but consider this.
Not only does the Senate wrongly help Congress pass unconstitutional bills, but the Senate also approves activist justices who wrongly declare unconstitutional laws, such as the anticipated income equality law, to be constitutional, just as they did with unconstitutional Obamacare.
What a racket!
The corrupt, citizen-elected Senate, not the Oval Office like Obama guard dog Fx News wants everybody to think, is the most unconstitutionally powerful office in the land.
The 17th Amendment needs to disappear.
And given that the United States has a high-wage, capital-intensive economy that exports mainly high-end goods, our own economic advancement is contingent upon the ability of U.S. firms to connect with high-income buyers in markets around the world
WRONG! Our wealth does not depend on our exports. What we produce and consume domestically dwarfs exports. But Imports are equivalent to 16% of our GNP and that's a lot of American workers out of work.
American workers are being undercut by poor Asians lives on even as the supply of desperately poor Asians runs low "
Wrong! They still have at least 100 billion chinese working in the fields that would love to come in to a factory jobs. There is no shortage of cheap Chinese labor. There are some regions that have become highly developed where wages are increasing, but don't believe the Chinese propaganda that there's no more cheap labor and that's it no longer a threat to us.
If Beijing is guilty of manipulating its currency to make its exports cheaper, then what it has done is to artificially lower the Chinese standard of living to subsidize the American standard of living, reducing its people’s purchasing power to increase our own. "
Wrong! This is misdirection. The issue is not that reducing their standard of living and thus boosting ours. The issue is that they are taking our manufacturing processes and knowledge. They are putting Americans out of jobs. They aren't increasing our purchasing power when they take our jobs.
If we were at full employment and had labor shortages, it would make sense to use their labor for low value activities. But we have high unemployment and we are letting our manufacturing dissappear like a rum cake at an AA meeting.
We need that manufacturing to keep our own people employed. And we need it even more in times of war. It's a major mistake to become so dependent on other countries. Our founding fathers warned us about that.
Hire a proofer!!
Obama’s focus on equality within America is jealousy.
Looking our for our national interest is not jealousy, it’s common sense. High tariffs is a strategy that our founding fathers used and it worked well for us for 180 years until we abandoned it.
Read the whole thing. We are still the top manufacturer in the world. I seriously doubt Williamson is on the Chinese payroll. (slaps forehead)
We’re the largest consumer market in the world. There is no reason that we should allow countries like China unfettered access to our consumer market when we have high unemployment.
Besides, we might produce some high dollar stuff like airplanes, in markets that China is trying very hard to penetrate. But walk through Wal-mart and tell me we are still the number one producer. We’re not.
I am constantly amazed by the eagerness of purported conservatives to interfere with the right of others to do business where and with whom they choose.
What happened to that devotion to the free market?
Your post is quite right. And for the 1% on Wall Street and in the corporate boardrooms, follow the money. Most of it goes into democrat coffers these days.
A fellow, a smart fellow, just might ask: “Why?”
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