LIBERAL SMOKESCREEN
In a recent N.Y. Times article, a wealthy businessman argued for higher taxes on the rich. Many prominent Democrats are also calling for a wealth tax. Each year we would have to give a percentage of our net worth to the government. Supposedly this would eliminate income inequality. How paying higher taxes would lift the incomes of low wage earners, I don’t know. The left goes on endlessly about income inequality, but sometimes it sounds more like envy than empathy.
Sadly, liberals refuse to see that high incomes come from providing superior goods and services to consumers. Rockefeller made billions by providing oil for heating and lighting that was far cheaper than whale blubber. Henry Ford got rich making cars for the common man. Gates and Jobs gave us the information age and they were justly rewarded. The countries with the most billionaires have the highest living standards. Furthermore, the richest people give away a large percentage of their wealth to worthwhile causes – Carnegie’s libraries, Gates in Africa. The Democratic Party wants to punish successful people and reward those who accomplish nothing. Their dislike of capitalism has led them into a blind alley.
It’s sickening to hear these socialists prattle on about income inequality. By subsidizing people, the left has killed their incentives to work and helped to make their incomes more unequal. You can even lay homelessness at their door. Most people in America are doing pretty good these days. High incomes are a sign of prosperity and a successful economy. The only way to narrow income inequality is through a free enterprise system that gives everybody the opportunity to upgrade their earnings. Abe Lincoln said it best, “You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.”
