I saw a picture recently of the crowd at Occupy Wall Street in which one of the demonstrators was holding a sign saying “EQUALIZE INCOME.” Do any of those who are concerned about growing income inequality have a clue about it or what the terrible consequences would be if they were to achieve their goal?
There is a very simple explanation for growing income inequality. You can’t earn less than nothing, but the sky’s the limit. As some people continue to earn nothing and others succeed, some beyond our wildest imagination, the difference between zero and the highest amount will grow.
We should be exceedingly thankful to the 1 percent. They are the movers and shakers. They make things happen. The money they earn doesn’t take food off my table or gas out of the tank of my car.
Just the opposite is true. Because they innovate and create, they are responsible for our prosperity. Bill Gates, the late Steve Jobs and thousands of unnamed others didn’t get rich by exploiting the poor. They got rich by making our lives better.
There is a false claim bolstered by cherry picked numbers that working Americans haven’t made progress, in fact, that we are worse off. That is true if you look at the 2007 to 2010 numbers, but not true if you look at the 2004 to 2007 numbers.
And so it goes. There are frequent ups and downs. Over the long haul, however, we are moving upward. In 1967, the earliest year for which I could find comparable data, mean household income for the third quintile, expressed in 2010 dollars, was $56,517. In 2010, that figure was $79,040. That’s progress.
There are, of course, those evil denizens of the financial world who are raking in multi-million dollar paychecks. There’s an interesting thing about the way they get paid, the salaries are relatively small and they make the real money based on their performance.
Performance! What a novel concept. Well, performance for whom? The shareholders, of course. You know, folks like the pension funds that depend on a decent return on investments in order to meet their obligations to retirees and keep the retirement checks flowing.
It is strange that the OWS crowd can get so excited about the fact that a banker earned tens of millions of dollars making other people rich when they express so little concern for the truly high paid.
In 2010, Lady Gaga earned $90 million, Leonardo DiCaprio $77 million, Johnny Depp $50 million. This is but a random sample. Let’s talk to the entertainment industry’s liberal elite about real income equalization.
I say Mr. or Ms. Celebrity, would you mind trying to get by on $49,500 rather than the mega-millions you are earning so that we can equalize incomes? Not!
The cry for income equalization is a shop-worn tool for collectivists, like labor union officials, who prosper politically by inducing greed and envy among economic illiterates.
It is incredible that so many seemingly intelligent people such as those who “occupy” would fall for it. Perhaps, they didn’t fall for it. Perhaps, they, too, intend to prosper politically from inducing greed and envy.
Fortunately, the average American, you know, the vast majority of the real 99 percent, is too smart to fall for that.
David Denholm, president of the Public Service Research Foundation, is a conservative/libertarian gadfly who can’t help thinking such thoughts and writing about them.
