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If your goal is to pull the money from those goddam rich people, then realize all you can do is raise the poor to the middle. On the other hand, if you don�t give a damn about people richer than you, and everyone does the best they can, then there is no limit to how far right a wealth-creating engine can move the curve. Poor people today make more money than average people did a hundred years ago, and they can buy much cooler stuff with what they make �- like televisions. So write this on your palm, because there will be a test in the afterlife: if you want to help the poor by taking from the rich, all you can do is take all that they have. Take from the industrious, the ambitious, the clever and the hardworking long enough, and they will go somewhere else and get rich -- again. And then where are you? Your bell curve gets narrower, and as the gap between rich and poor shrinks, you have a few years, maybe a few decades of smug satisfaction as the whole edifice topples slowly to the left and collapses. The rich get poorer -- good for you � and the poor? Well, simple. They starve to death. Behold Africa. What an egalitarian paradise! All starve equally. On the other hand, there is no limit �- again -� no limit, to how far to the right, how rich, capitalism can make even the poor. Some people will do better than others, because some people work harder, or smarter, or longer than others, and some are just plain luckier. That�s life. And if that�s the case, then some people, by definition, will be the rich half, and some will be the poor half. And at the far end of the poor half will be the people we call The Poor. It doesn�t matter how much money they make, or don�t make. The bottom ten or fifteen percent we will define as The Poor. Seventy-five years ago, these poor Americans lived in shacks with dirt floors. Today they live better. Not as well as the rest of us. But better. The rich get richer, and the poor get richer, too. We can narrow that bell curve, reduce the gap, if we so choose. We can have the bland, benign socialism of, say, Scandanavia. When we rein in the industrious and the inventive, we can narrow the difference between them and the unfortunate. And we will give to the rest of the world�what, exactly? Electric lights? Airplanes? Weather satellites? The non-existent laser in your non-existent DVD player? Computers? Miracle drugs? Carbon-fiber structures? MRI scanners? Where have the vast majority of earth-shaking inventions come from? Uh-huh. These socialists point an accusing, bony finger at America�s huge gap in outcome. They have a point. I point a perfectly toned, buff finger back and ask, where is your genius? Where is your creativity? Where are your movies? Where is your music? Where are your breakthroughs? Where, in fact, is your contribution? And where is your passion, you poor, passive, grey people? Here we are, working like hell to move the world�s bell curve to the right, and you�re just tagging along for the ride! Unfair! Unfair! Look, I am all for every reasonable, proven method to help the poor. Job training, educational grants � I�ll pay for that. And I�m all for a safety net. It�s the safety hammock I have a problem with. And if each and every one of us lifted ourselves up by our bootstraps, if every American was a millionaire, then someone would still have to sit at the left side of that curve. In a country club of billionaires, the guy with 900 million is a schmuck. In the richest country in the world, its poorest citizens live better than the vast ocean of human history. And yet there are poor Americans. That�s reality. It�s not fair. History � recent history � shows it can�t be made fair, unless you can make human capability, human creativity, all the same. This is indeed possible. You can crush people�s creativity and intelligence, and steal their hard work. There is the socialist laboratory of Africa, Cuba and the former Soviet Union as models. Go live there for a year before you throw your next Molotov cocktail at a G7 meeting. I want to be rich. I�m tired of being broke. I�m doing something about it, too. I am working like an animal. I am putting in 12-14 hour days, and weekends, for weeks on end, and no end in sight. I don�t have to do this. I could get by on a lot less. But see, I have a burning desire. I want to own my own airplane and see the world at 200 knots. That is my dream. And so I make the choice, daily, to work harder than I have to because there are things that I could never, ever have in a socialist society. There are more licensed pilots in Los Angeles county than there are in all of Europe �- and that�s just an example I am familiar with. America is an economic dynamo not because of the big corporations like Boeing, GM and GE. It is productive out of all proportion because there are so many people with so many small businesses trying to make a better life for themselves. LA county, alone, has what I believe would be the 22nd largest economy in the world. People work hard �- and smart -- in America. I�m one of them. Chances are, you are too. Many places in the world won�t let you work harder to get further. The State throws you a crappy apartment, a crappy car, a crappy job � so enjoy your crappy, hopeless life. How fair, how compassionate, is that? I�m doing something else, too. I�m giving up what�s left of my free time, because the fact of the matter is, I�m writing a goddam book, and all you rich folks nodding a few paragraphs back � well, you get those checkbooks ready. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more. -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
