Travis Rowley: Free the Rich, It Trickles Down
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
The most toxic personal perspective wearing on the State of Rhode Island is that of class envy. Disseminated primarily by union advocates and Democratic politicians, it is an un-American economic attitude that teaches people to look upon their neighbors with scorn, and upon themselves as victims – oppressed by those who generate a larger income; oppressed by capitalism itself; oppressed by the very notion of the American Dream.
Persistently dismissing America’s traditional “trickle-down economics” as fraudulent and unfair, Democrats advocate for “bottom-up economics,” a system that puts excessive tax burdens on the wealthy, and always results in the redistribution of wealth. When Democrats see rich men and poor men, they see victors and victims. And the scenario must be rectified. By them.
Justifying socialism is not easy. So Democrats insist that, in order to revive and maintain a thriving economy, the government must put money into the hands of the poor because this creates demand for the things businesses sell. Don’t worry, Mr. Businessman. Your money is on its way back up. We just finished spreading it around the ghetto!
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTSeriously, how’s that stimulus bill really working out for you?
To understand Democrats, one must understand that they are incapable of viewing an economy in any way other than a finite pie of wealth, most of which is hoarded by a few greedy Wall Streeters who bury their piles of cash in their backyards. But poor people, well, they buy groceries!
Normal Americans don’t vilify success, and they understand that wealth multiplies within the free market system. It might befuddle Democrats to inform them that American wealth was created by American work, not discovered in the Appalachian Mountains; that America didn’t start out as the wealthiest nation on Earth, but became the wealthiest nation by leaving its citizens to their own devices.
Union apologists will claim that organized labor was responsible for the prosperity of the American middle class by its growth and activism in the 20th century that seized profits from the capitalist overlords. But the world’s masses were already on their way to American shores before the unfortunate labor explosion of the 1930s. They were coming because, as famed economist Milton Friedman told us, “There is no period in human history in which the ordinary man – the ordinary man – had as great an improvement in his lot in life as in the 19th century, when the government was of trivial importance.” This was a time period that knew no federal income tax. Even the wealthy were allowed to keep all of their income. It was a Democratic nightmare.
Normal Americans also understand that wealthy people spend money, too – much more efficiently than the government, and in ways that greatly benefit the poor. Proof that wealth trickles down is provided whenever someone cashes a paycheck. Yet, Democrats refuse to concede to the fact that most jobs are provided by the people they deem “rich.” Wasn’t the money in your pocket once in the possession of your boss?
Democrats won’t admit it, but wealth trickles down. Duh!
But when one views the world through the lens of class warfare, one will inevitably consider it a more just policy to arbitrarily confiscate certain people’s money, and fund the government with lopsided progressive taxation that redistributes wealth to the bottom of the economic ladder. It’s Europe. And it sucks.
Taxing the rich may make Democrats feel good about themselves. But how does that help the poor?
Bottom-up economics is such an absurd concept that it must be supported not by logic or evidence, but by false speculation (“The economy would have been even worse without the stimulus bill”), and by appealing to humanity’s ugliest aspects – greed and resentment. In order to accomplish their goal of taxing the nation’s top income earners into oblivion, Democrats need to get as many people as possible to adopt class envy as a political mindset, coaching them to covet, crave, and hate. This outlook will be the Left’s greatest asset when they eventually come back again and again to savage the nation’s top producers.
Whether on purpose or not, this is what WRNI’s Scott MacKay alluded to last week when he spoke about the Rhode Island economy: “The issue nobody likes to talk about is embedded in the culture of a blue-collar state. The blue-collar manufacturing jobs have left but the attitudes of that era live on among too many native Rhode Islanders.”
Rhode Island isn’t hosting a battle of ideas. This is culture war. After seventy years of leftist rule, too many Rhode Islanders live by – or worse, have their pensions and paychecks relying upon – the Democrats’ insistence that the American free-market system is actually a righteous war against rich and evil men, rather than the greatest economic system ever crafted for the average man.
This heinous mentality causes Rhode Islanders to reject free enterprise and habitually vote Democrats back into power, who then proceed to assault the wealthy, extinguish opportunity, and drive jobs out of the state.
Democrats are no longer American. The American Dream has always been about competition, individualism, and opportunity – not material equality. Once someone desires more than equal opportunity, he begins to destroy the foundation of America’s promise.
Rhode Islanders, it’s time to drop the attitude, for the rich must be free in order for the poor to prosper.
Travis Rowley (TravisRowley.com) is Chairman of the RI Young Republicans.
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