The Undeserving Rich

I’m Rich --- and probably you are too but of course neither of us was aware of this fact until our liberal friends pointed out that we are among the “fortunate fifth” and that it was high time that we started paying our “fair share” of income tax. This is what is behind the drive by the liberal left to rescind any tax breaks in order to ensure the “rich pay their fair share”. Of course you and I know that the truly wealthy – like Senator Kerry pay very little tax (12% for Heinz-Kerry) because they can afford to pay the very best accountants to find ways to avoid paying taxes. In short it isn’t the really wealthy who are paying taxes and supporting all of these wonderful pork barrel projects like the “big dig” (thank you Senators Kerry and Kennedy), it is the middle class – the very people who are being promised tax relief and who are in fact carrying almost the entire tax burden. But the government needs more money so the “rich” have to pay. But the reality is that it is those of us who are keeping our nose above water that will be robbed once again because we are “rich”. So how do these liberals get by with selling this snake oil? Who is buying it?

The people who buy this fall into two categories, one is that group of people who pay no taxes but get plenty of free benefits from the government. In effect they are selling their vote to the politician that promises to continue giving them all of these benefits while taking the money out of some one else’s pocket to pay for them. These are the people who say they “vote their pocket book” when in point of fact it is some one else’s pocketbook they are voting to empty into theirs.

The second category is that group of naïve` people – who actually believed what they were taught in school by professors who never held a job, never had to meet a financial objective, and actually believe that the government should tax the wealthy because they are “fortunate” and that corporations are essentially evil enterprises that are exploiting their workers. These are the people who truly believe that it is right to take money from the undeserving rich (you and me) and give it to the deserving poor. In effect the rich don’t deserve their wealth because they just got lucky and therefore should have it taken away by the government and redistributed to those who have less – those who are less fortunate. Although the liberals would dispute this their position relative to taxation can be summarized by the statement

“From each according to his ability. To each according to his needs.”

Does that phrase sound familiar? It should because it is a quote from “The Communist Manifesto.” Is it any wonder that the liberals prefer to call themselves “progressives” rather than the more accurate—but out of style – “Marxists”. If they actually articulated what they are attempting to do i.e. create and egalitarian society people might catch on. Naturally, just as in Animal Farm, the elites (meaning the professors and their intellectual friends) would be the most highly revered and rewarded because they are simply smarter (and not profit oriented either but I digress).

But are those of us who exist in that rarefied atmosphere of the “fortunate fifth” – meaning that we are in that glorified group of the top 20% of wage earners in the country—have we truly won “life’s lottery” as described by Dick Gephart? The (insulting) implication is that we just got lucky while those who are “less fortunate” were simply unlucky. Is this an accurate portrayal or is our “luck” the result of our decisions? For example, who went to school, had an after school job, saved their money, went to college, worked to pay for their education, and then left school and got a high income job? Who waited to have children until they were married and could afford them? Who goes to work in the dark and comes home in the dark? Who cut class to hang out on street corners? Who finally dropped out of school because it was a bunch of old guys telling them what to do? Who had a series of illegitimate children? Who got a job then lost it because they couldn’t get up that early to get to work? Who blamed everyone else for their lack of income, their old car, their drug problem? Who is on welfare and feels the government should provide better benefits to them? It seems to me that those that were lucky and won life’s lottery seem to have made a number of good decisions in association with some significant sacrifices while those that lost in life’s lottery made a long succession of poor decisions and focused exclusively on immediate self-gratification.

It seems to me that those of us who fall into the undeserving rich category deserve to be there by dint of hard work, good decisions, and a lot of self-sacrifice while those who live in poverty and have a marginal existence got there as the result of poor work habits, bad decisions, and a lack of self-sacrifice. Therefore, the idea that the “rich” are undeserving because they got lucky is not only a total falsehood it is downright insulting. But the liberals feel sorry for these people and think that the government should provide them housing and income simply because they are poor. Well as I recall, in the United States of America all men are created equal so if the government thinks they should subsidize housing for the poor, why don’t they subsidize mine—after all I’m a citizen too and the Lord knows I could use some help. But this isn’t the way liberals think is it? They see that the rich live in nice houses, drive nice cars, and pay their bills, so clearly they can afford to give some of their wealth to the poor simply because the poor need it. This was Robin Hood’s philosophy but as I recall the Sheriff of Nottingham had quite a different take on Robin’s activity. That evil ungrateful, exploitive Sheriff actually thought Robin Hood was actually robbing people – like a common criminal. Of course the liberal spin is that taking money from the rich to redistribute it to the poor is morally justified because the rich have too much and the poor have too little. This was the philosophy of Robin Hood but it was also the philosophy of Karl Marx which was carried out by Nikolai Lenin with disastrous results but this failure has not deterred our liberal intelligentsia because they still refuse to recognize any individual’s responsibility for his circumstances.

So on a parting note consider this:

“Comrades! We must abolish the cult of the individual once and for all.”

This is a quote from Nikita Krushchev that really describes what the liberal establishment is trying to do by focusing on societies “victims” and subordinating individual rights to those of these “groups”.

“From each according to his ability. To each according to his needs.”

Remember these words because this is the unspoken mantra of the liberal establishment.