Praise the 1%!
Twisted minds like that of Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden and the Progressive Left in general are taking shots at wealthy capitalists.
I came across an excellent article by George Reisman from October of 2011 that needs to be seen today.
Please consider In Praise of the Capitalist 1 Percent
The protesters in the Occupy Wall Street movement and its numerous clones elsewhere in the country and around the world chant that 1 percent of the population owns all the wealth and lives at the expense of the remaining 99 percent. The obvious solution that they imply is for the 99 percent to seize the wealth of the 1 percent and use it for their benefit rather than allowing it to continue to be used for the benefit of the 1 percent, who are allegedly undeserving greedy capitalist exploiters. In other words, the implicit program of the protesters is that of socialism and the redistribution of wealth.
What the protesters do not realize is that the wealth of the 1 percent provides the standard of living of the 99 percent.
“All of us, 100 percent of us, benefit from the wealth of the hated capitalists.”
For example, the $6 billion fortune of the late Steve Jobs was built on a foundation of Mr. Jobs having made it possible for Apple Computer to introduce such new and improved products as the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad, and then heavily saving and reinvesting the share of the profits that came to him.
Jobs’s billions serve largely in the production of Apple’s products. Similarly, old Henry Ford’s great personal fortune, earned on the foundation of introducing major improvements in the efficiency of automobile production, which brought down the price of a new automobile from about $10,000 at the beginning of the 20th Century to $300 in the mid 1920s, was used to make possible the production of millions of Ford automobiles.
Nevertheless, the world the protesters yearn for is a world from which the billionaire capitalists and their corporations have been banished, replaced by small, poor producers, who would not be significantly richer than they themselves are, which is to say, impoverished.
They expect that in a world of such producers, producers who lack the capital required to produce very much of anything, let alone carry on the mass production of the technologically advanced products of modern capitalism, they will somehow be economically better off than they are now. Obviously, the protesters could not be more deluded.
Capitalism — laissez-faire capitalism — is the ideal economic system. It is the embodiment of individual freedom and the pursuit of material self-interest. Its result is the progressive rise in the material well-being of all, manifested in lengthening life spans and ever-improving standards of living.
Recent History
Look at what happened in Venezuela when the state took over control of the oil industry.
Look at what happened in Zimbabwe when president Robert Mugabe seized the land to redistribute it fairly.
US Setup
In the US, Progressives led by Warren, AOC, and Sanders want to confiscate wealth to satisfy their self-determined measure of fairness, just as Mugabe and Maduro did.
The US progressives are not nearly so extreme, but that’s how it always starts.
Meanwhile here is reality.
“The protesters are literally kept alive on the foundation of the wealth of the capitalists they hate.”
Addendum
I wrote that post several days ago to fill a slot while traveling. I had no idea this morning that Amazon would announce huge hiring plans.
Praise of the one percent ties in quite nicely with Amazon is Hiring 17,000 With $1,000 Signing Bonus at $17 an Hour
It also ties in with Why I Hate Unions
It’s the 1% not the 99% who create all the jobs and improve the standards of living for everyone.
The socialists would break these job-creating giants apart in the name of their perverted sense of fairness.
Mish
I experienced a different version of your story and it’s quite relevant to the quoted article. I work for Apple. I can assure you that prior to Steve Jobs returning, the company was in bad shape. I don’t think people realize how bad it was unless you were there. The only direction that company was heading was the wrong direction. It was built into the culture from the top employee to the bottom.
That’s the biggest pile of nonsense I’ve ever heard. Um, yes, you just listed a few of the most highly paid professions in the world. Yes, they do write blogs and yes they do trade the stock market.
NO, they are not working for very little money. They are working for a lot of money. Being an engineer earning 80-200k a year is a massive amount of money, by any standard in the world except for the ultra rich.
I still cant figure out how anyone thought this wasnt a story. This is the first cyberattack on an energy facility in the US that impacted supply.
Top 1% of US taxpayers pay 40.1% of all taxes, up from
half that in the 1970s. The avg 1%
taxpayer makes $1.7M/yr. Who pays taxes: top
1% in income (>$540K a year, min) pay 29% of taxes; top 19% pay 24% of taxes, hence top
20% pay about 50% of all US taxes. The bottom 40% get more back as income credits from government than they paid
in.
YOu can build wealth at any income level in the USA. Really, it’s not that hard. Just spend less than you earn. Since the lower rungs of income are heavily subsidized it’s not as if those folks are earning less than 50-60k. They are earning that much….just half of it is government benefits.It’s possible to become a millionaire on 40k a year without any government benefits, and even have to pay for your own health insurance. I do, and I’m worth a half million dollars at 43 with a plan in place to get me there by 48, still only earning 40k a year from my 8-5 job.This is America and there are plenty of ways to learn how to invest, save money etc. Discipline and self-education are choices. Yeah, it would be easier for me to build wealth if I earned 500k a year, and I will never earn that in my profession, but that was a choice I made too.