If I hear one more conservative jump on the hate the CEO bandwagon and complain about the big guy getting richer while the 401K of the average Joe goes down the toilet, I’m going to scream. Ok, that’s a little bit on the dramatic side, but it does reflect my level of frustration. If a Liberal makes that kind of complaint, it’s simply because he’s a liberal and can’t help himself. That’s what they do. Anyone who calls himself a conservative ought to know better.
That is the sort of outlook which we who call ourselves conservatives sometimes get trapped into adopting. It is the liberal thinker who is constantly complaining that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.
Remember, the “rich” here are two different elements. They are 1) those who have managed through hard work, talent, education and skill to produce goods and services which are needed by society and as a result, they are being paid what they have earned. Remember, if you as a kid open up a lemonade stand and you make very good lemonade and especially if you have a talent for “bringing in the business” so to speak, you will have lots of customers and the quarters will be quickly filling your pockets.
Do you deserve all of those quarters are is it fair that you should have those quarters while the kid down the street who either is too lazy to set up a lemonade stand of his own, or doesn’t know how to make good tasting lemonade, or who ticks off the other kids who would be his customers, he earns very few if any quarters? Should you keep and enjoy your quarters or should you give half of them to the other kid? Should the other kids think you are some kind of evil and selfish jerk because you have a lot of quarters in your pockets? 2) they are the investors who put their money into the business which made it grow and now are bringing in dividends and stock growth.
Not all investors make money but that is not the fault of the market. It is the “fault” of the investor for if he knew all of the ways to make his money go to good return, he would end up winning and not losing. Remember the parable of the talents in the Bible? Why did Jesus say “to one he gave ten and to one he gave five and to one he gave one”? Different talent and skills. The one who had ten and made ten more was not criticized by Jesus. Jesus never called him a rich, selfish jerk who didn’t deserve what he made with those talents. He didn’t say that he got rich while the poor guy who only had one talent became poorer.
The rich get richer because they work for it. I’m not talking about the occasional cheat such as a Madoff. I’m talking about the captains of industry, the people who make corporate America work and who have grown the wealth of the nation. These are the people under attack and they even get hit at by conservatives on occasion. That is the sort of correction I want to make and thus the points I made here.
The transfer of wealth is not from the poor to the rich. Obama’s plan is to transfer the wealth from the rich to the poor. That may sound like a great idea on the surface but it is the worst possible idea in the world and is the core foundation of Marx’s theory of Collective Socialism (Communism). The method was to make the so-called little guy, the working class feel, oppressed by the “big guy” and to believe that the big rich guy became rich because he stole from the little guy. That is a big lie but even those of us who really do really do believe in freedom of and for the individual, and opportunity often get trapped into thinking along the same line as the socialists. The kid with the better lemonade stand earned every quarter he made and he deserves to keep all of them. He did not get rich by stealing from the other kids or the other lemonade stand operators.
Obama’s plan is to transfer the wealth from the producers of the wealth (note the significance of that term “producers of the wealth”) and give it to the non producers. The money is not going to the corporate managers and business owners. The media likes to create diversions and distractions by talking about things such as CEO bonuses and such but those are only red herrings intended to cover up the real nastiness going on. When someone says “look over here” they are trying to take your eyes away from where you were looking before. They don’t want you looking where you were looking before because then you’d see what is going on and they don’t want you to see that. They want you to be mad as all getout about some CEO getting his pay cheque. That which was agreed to by his company and by Congress. It was no problem for him to get his pay before so why is it a problem now? He didn’t kill your 401K. It was not Wall Street that killed yours and my 401K’s. Wall Street was killed by the practices of the government and the liberal fiscal policies and because Wall Street took a hit, your 401K took a hit. Wall Street was as much the victim as your account was.
The non-producers will get the money and so that you are not made aware of that, they’re saying “look over here. Don’t look behind that curtain.” Remember that line from The Wizard of Oz, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain”? They’re saying, “look at the huge bonuses the rich are getting” and you’re saying, “hey, that’s not fair. Why are they getting bonuses?” and so the distraction has proved successful.
The ownership of GM will be 55% to the UAW. The UAW is not a member of the producers. They do not nor are they capable of producing wealth. If there is no wealth being produced, where is all of the money needed to run this huge machine going to come from? The kid who set up the successful lemonade stand has some quarters in his pockets. He doesn’t need all of those. It’s not fair that he should have so many quarters in his pockets since no one else on the block does. Now instead of the smart kid who built up the lemonade stand business running it, the street bullies are going to run the stand and guess how successful it will be at selling lemonade now.
Dan W. Dooley
