I am proud to announce that I have not bought into the new attempt by the federal government to get me to participate in class warfare. I am, for sure, part of the 99 percent of Americans who are not wealthy. However, where I differ from those who are attempting to divide and conquer, I do not begrudge the one percent of the wealthiest Americans. Quite the contrary, I believe they are the only people who can actually create jobs. That’s why I appreciate them, and believe they already pay their “fair share” of taxes.
These people risk capital, which they created with their own work and which has already been taxed and taxed again, and when they risk that capital to attempt to build a business, Washington politicians, many who have never worked in the private sector, go after them. How can we expect people who have never worked with a balance sheet or profit and loss statement to somehow manage our money? It makes no sense at all.
I am amazed that the national news media has successfully gotten Americans to believe that payroll tax and capital gains tax are the same, so if a secretary pays a higher percentage of payroll taxes than her or his boss does in capital gains taxes, they have compared apples with oranges. The worst part of it is the news media knows the difference. They just hope we don’t.
I saw a young man on TV who wrote a college paper that defined the “American dream,” as government-provided education and a government-provided job afterward. I am not sure when schools stopped teaching that every great success in America came from private individuals working hard, sometimes two jobs while going to college — college paid for by the money they earned working, even if it meant taking a year or two off to save up. Then, going out and pounding the pavement, sending out resumes and doing whatever is necessary to find that job working for a company, probably ultimately created by one of the one percent.
We have got to stop dividing people up to get votes. That is precisely what the whole class warfare thing is about. And the more we get used as pawns in this game, the less we trust each other. And when we stop trusting each other, there is always some politician who is there to grab us and get us to vote for them.
You don’t need to redistribute wealth. If the powers that be will leave Americans alone to create their own wealth, whatever that is, they will do two things. They will try to make life better for themselves and will help those in need of their own free will. All great endowments have come from the wealthy and I, of the 99 percent, envy and respect them.
One of my heroes is Adam Smith, a person this generation probably knows nothing about. But I’ll bet they will Google him now. Smith put it this way: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”
Frank Lewis may be reached at 740-353-3101, ext. 232, or at flewis@heartlandpublications.com.
Some think just because they trade work-effort for an income that they are entitled to more perks in which the expense is deffered to later years.
Bring back the tax rates of the 1950's and 60's.
Also, this shell game of Capital Gains taxed differently than a wage has to be changed.
For individuals, no more double dipping and retiring early. And, if you do retire then no more keeping your job. That shuts out the next generation.
Also, entrepreneurs and the rich are different and only partly overlapping. Most of the rich are not entrepreneurs; they are executives of established corporations, institutional managers of other kinds, the wealthiest doctors and lawyers, the most successful entertainers and athletes, people who simply inherited their money or, yes, people the top 1% of these wealthy individuals is dominated by those who work in the financial sector and more specifically on wall street. Most of these people are not John Galt or even Steve Jobs. They do nothing but exchange currency, debt, stocks, commodities and complex financial instruments. The growth of the financial sector and deregulation of the financial sector has been accompanied by rising income inequality and its overall benefit to society has been questionable at best.
More importantly the rich do not have a monopoly on risk or hard work. There are scientists — and artists and academics — who are just as smart as any entrepreneur or financier, only they are interested in different rewards. A single mother holding down a job and putting herself through community college works just as hard as any hedge fund manager. A person who takes out a mortgage — or a student loan, or who conceives a child — on the strength of a job she knows she could lose at any moment (thanks, perhaps, to one of those job creators) assumes as much risk as someone who starts a business.
In conclusion, while there is no reason we can't praise guys like Henry Fords, Thomas Edison and Bill Gates it is just nonsensical to say all the rich are noble hard working folks and that we as a society owe them something just because they are rich and that they are above critique.
The result of this reality is that, while espousing a position lamenting what the national new media does, you engage in your own form of political discourse while seemingly claiming to be outside of that realm. For example, you speak of "class warfare" as if that's a phrase the current administration uses. You express frustration with dividing people for political gain, but your discourse does just that. You turn to a notion of individualism and laissez-faire economics that doesn't, and importantly, didn't exist as many would claim. The interweaving of the government in the economy has always been. The question isn't about if the government should play a role, but how. The problem with pulling out a single quote from someone like Smith is that you suggest we just need to want to have prosperity and embrace a desire for work, without taking into consideration the structural limitations people face, regardless of how much they might like for something to be.
Finally, I guess the most frustrating aspect of this editorial is that you've flattened history, suggesting that there was some period in our our past when we did this the right way. Then, as now, we have dealt with a number of tensions in how we understand ourselves to be a democratic society. Sadly, I think we're doing a very poor job because many have accepted a narrative that we can only benefit from the benevolence of the extremely rich. As far as I understand economics, trickle down doesn't work. The periods when we've enjoyed the most prosperity in this country we had a radically different structure by which the public embraced and acknowledged that the society desired required funds (Take a look at this for a better sense of how we've funded public works http://visualizingeconomics.com). The highway system, as just one example, came about in response to the inability of private funds to maintain roadways. Our failing infrastructure highlights our narrow view of what it means to be a member of a society in relationship to others; as an individual member of something larger. I fear we continue to erode such a worldview as we continually embrace at atomistic view of democracy. I feel such editorial writing only pushes us more in that direction.
One's "fair share" is a political question. The emergence of a movement calling into question the current structure of a economic system is a healthy corrective to a view that such disparity is inherently American. This is true especially for a region such as southern Ohio, where so many are disadvantaged by structural challenges such as poverty. Learning about such inequality is crucial to our democracy. Here is but one resource http://www.pbs.org/newshour/businessdesk/2012/04/economic-inequality-series-a-g.html.
Again, a very well written article.