Travis Rowley: The Rich Must Get Richer

Saturday, July 28, 2012

Travis Rowley, GoLocalProv MINDSETTER™

 

“I happen to think that the best social program is a job.” – Ronald Reagan

A couple of weeks ago Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly reminded Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D) during an interview that “the economy did revive” after Ronald Reagan drastically cut taxes for America’s highest income earners. Because this is similar to the plan being proposed by Mitt Romney and the Republicans, O’Reilly asked Kucinich, “Do you see that as a failure?”

“If it’s gonna accelerate wealth to the top in this country using a tax structure to do it,” Kucinich responded, “that’s wrong cuz it’s unfair. That’s not American.”

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Progressives who respond to this by attempting to disprove the “Reagan Recovery” will be – as usual – missing the point, which is this: Kucinich didn’t deny that tax cuts would help to revive a sagging economy. He simply verified that he couldn’t care less; that he is willing to deny prosperity to average Americans if that prosperity means that wealthy people would benefit as well.

Barack Obama had a similar moment in 2008. Obama was informed during a Democratic presidential debate that “when the [capital gains tax] rate dropped [in the 1990s], revenues from the tax increased. The government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28%, the revenues went down.” The moderator went on to ask, “So why raise it at all?” Obama’s response was that he “would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.”

The Democrat-controlled Senate acted upon the Democratic attitude toward wealth this week, voting to raise taxes on Americans earning over $200,000 per year – many of whom are small business owners.

Democrats voted in favor of the tax hike in spite of the fact that President Obama had this to say in January 2010: “I am just listening to the consensus among people who know the economy best. And what they will say is that if you either increase taxes or significantly lowered spending when the economy remains somewhat fragile that that would have a destimulative effect. And potentially you’d see a lot of folks losing business, more folks potentially losing jobs. That would be a mistake when the economy has not fully taken off.”

Sure enough, Ernst and Young has produced a study that shows the tax hike potentially “kill[ing] more than 700,000 jobs.”

Creating Wealth

What the leftist outlook on income disparity ultimately translates to is Democrats actually being philosophically hostile to an economic rebound. After all, the primary reason that wealthy business owners hire people is because it will be of personal benefit to them.

This is sure to offend Democrats’ utopian sensibilities, but the fact remains that employing people is not an exercise in altruism. The purpose is to turn a profit. The purpose is to get richer.

And Democrats will be damned to support any policies that may “accelerate wealth to the top.” To them, the freedom to retain one’s own wealth is “not American.”

Yet, the fact remains that wealth is created for all parties involved when the voluntary activity of capitalism is allowed to be undertaken – in this case, the offering of a job, and then the willingness of someone to execute it.

“A rising tide lifts all boats” is how it was once famously explained by President Kennedy.

Today, Democrats argue that what is needed to turn things around is to put “demand” back into the economy; to make sure that the middle class has the “purchasing power” to buy stuff from well-to-do business owners.

But Democrats won’t have that “purchasing power” be the result of actual work, because employment causes the further enrichment of “the rich.” In addition to that economic reality, in order to create the incentive to hire more workers, Democrats would first have to undergo the agony of easing the tax burden that now sits upon corporations and the wealthy.

The wealthy – the very targets of Democratic scorn; the people who “didn’t build that;” the people who have yet to pay their “fair share;” the people who travel throughout the country in “private jets;” those “rich bastards who would happily slit your throat for just one more dollar,” as one left-wing blogger once put it so well.

Creating Purchasing Power

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Democrats have proven themselves fully aware that job creation is spawned by throttling back the inordinate tax pressure placed on job creators – tax policy that has proven over and over again to provide “purchasing power” for the middle class.

Armed, however, with a political disposition to disparage “the rich,” Democrats have been left with a political proclivity to strip them of even more of their wealth, leaving themselves with only one option when it comes to setting economic policy: Artificially placing “demand” back into the economy by direct redistribution, all at once satisfying their sense of “fairness,” their disdain for the successful, and their need for a 2012 campaign slogan – “We struck a blow for the working man, by taxing the rich man.”

It is from this political disposition that Democrats find themselves concocting asinine economic theories that justify such collectivism – claiming that “for every dollar a person receives in food stamps…$1.79 is put back into the economy;” that unemployment payments and food stamps “are two things that are the most stimulative that you can do;” that they are “the biggest bang for the buck.” (Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Steny Hoyer)

Absolutely. At this point, who could deny the awesome economic power wielded by socialist policies?

In reality, there’s nothing more powerful – nothing more “stimulative” – than capitalism; than work; than establishing the principle that people should be allowed to keep what they earn.

But, amazingly, to Democrats, “that’s not American.”

Filthy Rich

Jobs. That’s how you put wealth in the hands of the “working people.” By actually incentivizing them to, you know, work.

And leaving wealth in the hands of those who created it in the first place is the best way to expand economic opportunity for American workers.

Yes, it’s true: The price of this economic vitality is that some people will most certainly become filthy, filthy rich.

Oh, the horror.

If you’re wondering why the economy has yet to kick in, it’s because Democrats aren’t trying to revive it. They’re trying to heal the world, and “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” There’s a sick psychosis, a wicked agenda, and an evil ideology at play – all of which are more important to Democrats than the current well-being of America’s poor and middle class.

Travis Rowley (TravisRowley.com) is chairman of the RI Young Republicans and author of The RI Republican: An Indictment of the Rhode Island Left.
 

 

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