63. Adam Smith
(With an afterward by A.B.)
The name I’ve chosen to write under is Adam Smith, the great philosopher who set forth the foundations of modern capitalism.
I’m going to speak in favor of tax breaks for the wealthy. I think we should have a graduated scale, the more money you make, the more tax breaks you should get.
I know this runs contrary to much of what you hear in the liberal press, particularly from our local communist and his newspaper, but hear me out.
Let’s say you have two brothers who are asking for money.
The first is poor. He has trouble holding a job because his profession pays little and employers profit by changing workers regularly. He has been unlucky in his past enterprises. His friends: all poor. He badly needs money to repair his house, which has drawn the attention of the authorities. His transportation needs work. He has debts he needs to service.
The second brother is wealthy. He has an MBA, his job is secure. He profits from his enterprises, and shares information about opportunities with you. His friends are well heeled and well connected. He wishes to invest the money he borrows from you, to build a building and start a business. Because of his connections, he gets good economy from each dollar. Money you give him will benefit the entire community, it will create jobs, perhaps even a job for your feckless, poor brother.
There is little more to it than that. Give money to the very wealthy, who understand it, who will increase it to the benefit of everyone. Aircraft will be built. New agricultural products will be developed. Armies will be raised, oil wells dug, merchant ships will ply the seas taking surpluses to underdeveloped countries and bringing back necessary commodities at bargain prices. The wealthy classes will grow as middle and lower classes are provided positive example. Who better to hold money than those who have proven the knowledge, connections, skill, and even providence to become wealthy? From the wealthy, prosperity will flow to the poor. This is why the unwashed risk their lives to come here as criminals, because America is the land of Opportunity, of wealth.
If you give the same money to the millions of poor, it will lift each one only a little, only for a moment. Their bad luck will suck it up, because they have no skill, their feckless brethren will borrow and never repay. It will actually encourage their poverty, by allowing them to continue without learning or benefiting from it. They’ll have more children, creating a larger surplus of people, and millions more in poverty.
Does a stockman give extra grain to the cow with the displaced hip? He wouldn’t be a stockman long if he didn’t give his extra grain to his finest producers, and send the rest to the slaughterhouse.
Does the orchard tender encourage the hundreds of small, misshapen fruit? No, the prosperous orchard owner hires the poor to pull the bad fruit from the tree, so each tree grows the most perfect, market ready fruit.
Why would we, as a society, do differently? What will become of our country if we encourage sloth, parasitism and the inferior?
There is a final reason to give tax breaks to the very rich: as a well deserved reward for providing jobs, creating entertainment, powering government, funding higher education, and giving the masses example; in short, for creating and maintaining our great nation.
A. Blinken: Counter point.
Normally, I don’t comment, but this piece is logical enough to confuse a person. The problem is, it simply isn’t so.
First off, people are not livestock. Our greatest asset lies in our people, particularly those who have not yet had a fair chance at the table. Creativity comes from new people, and new ideas. New ideas are what made America strong.
Second, the upper classes maintain themselves, and exclude us, by doing exactly what Adam Smith said, by spending money, often public money, on projects only they get to take part in. Show me the person who really, truly got rich from just hard work; there are enough to provide exceptions, but the rule is that the rich have an easier time to get rich than the poor, and the poor have an easier time to go to jail. The last thing we need is to strengthen the class that has just squandered the lives of our people and robbed our treasuries of literally billions of dollars on an unnecessary war.
Third, the rich force us to purchase things we don’t need, like bombers, at the cost of things we do need, like health care, because it is far more profitable to undertake grand technological efforts like bombers than it is to patch the aches and pains of millions of people.
Fourth, the rich don’t only create useful jobs in the U.S. What they really do is follow cheap labor, often in other countries. We by the imported products with American names for sale to us. The really, really wealthy aren’t tied to just one country, like most of us are, they have wealthy friends all over the world. This is why American bomber aircraft rely on parts made in other nations. We recall that the Bush and Bin Lauden families are friends.
Finally, it isn’t "providence" or skill that keeps the wealthy rich, it’s the sweat and effort of hundreds or thousands of common people, who work hard each day and receive only a portion of the profits of their efforts, and spend that small portion back into the capitalist coffers.
Let me be clear, I am no communist like the editor of the local paper, I believe in free enterprise. This is still a country there the average person has a chance to become somewhat wealthy, though not too many will reach into the 20% of people who are actually rich.
It isn’t a level playing field, and we certainly don’t need to make things worse by giving to those who already have.
Tax the rich, not the middle class.
And, yes, help the poor brother, not the rich one; he’s your brother!
