Your Real Problem is the Government, Not Rich People
There is an old Russian proverb that has always stuck with me because it so perfectly describes how so many people view the world:
“One day, a poor villager happens upon a magic-talking fish that is ready to grant him a single wish. Overjoyed, the villager weighs his options: “Maybe a castle? Or even better—a thousand bars of gold? Why not a ship to sail the world?” As the villager is about to make his decision, the fish interrupts him to say that there is one important caveat: whatever the villager gets, his neighbor will receive two of the same. Without skipping a beat, the villager says, “In that case, please poke one of my eyes out.” -- Bill Browder, Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice
There are an awful lot of people in the world who think just like the villager in this story. They are so caught up in envy and jealousy that they spend more time trying to tear down successful people than they do on building their own success. By the way, this is one of the little secrets of success. The more famous, wealthy, and successful you become, the more people there are who will hate your guts for no good reason.
Some liberals and socialists (but I repeat myself) have learned to take advantage of that.
So, let’s start with this…
How can rich people have a negative impact on your life?
How has Warren Buffet, Elon Musk, or Bill Gates hurt you? For the most part, they haven’t. If Taylor Swift buys a new mansion or LeBron James buys a new Rolls Royce just because he was bored and has an open spot in his garage, it doesn’t impact you or me. It’s not like that money was meant for us and went to them instead.
To the extent that we do give them our money for products, it’s voluntary. If you think a ticket to watch the Rock’s next movie or Kim Kardashian’s latest make-up product is too expensive, you don’t have to buy it. Nobody’s making you buy a Tesla from Elon Musk or contribute to Jeff Bezos’ bank account if you don’t like Amazon.
Granted, there are some rich people that have genuinely hurt people.
See Jeffrey Epstein, Sam Bankman-Fried, and Bernie Madoff. Also, come to think about it, Nancy Pelosi, but for different reasons than the other three.
Epstein sex trafficked minors. Bankman-Fried and Madoff also ripped people off. Are you one of those people or do you personally know someone that was? It’s unlikely.
In fact, if there are rich people who have negatively impacted you, it’s highly likely that they’ve managed to do that by changing government policy. Remember Nancy Pelosi? How many people has George Soros gotten killed by helping to get soft-on-crime district attorneys elected? If the creepy “you’ll own nothing and be happy” WEF guys ever change your life for the worse, it will almost certainly be by convincing the government to put the sort of policies they favor in place.
This is actually one of the great ironies of the Left’s incessant demand that the government be used to stifle, punish, and harass wealthy people because the “rich” have too much influence over our government. If our government wasn’t so massive and involved in every little thing, the rich would have very little reason to want to influence the government in the first place.
On the other hand, if the government is handing out subsidies, putting out endless regulations, constantly playing games with the tax code, and picking winners and losers in the marketplace, the rich almost have no choice other than to try to guide government policy.
If we embraced small government, even if the rich wanted the government to cater to them, they’d be very limited in what they could do because the government wouldn’t be constantly sticking its nose into every little thing.
Of course, that’s one of the many problems with government, isn’t it? Who taxes you exorbitantly, wastes most of the money, and uses a lot of the remaining money on things you wouldn’t want done at any price? The government. Who threatens to audit you? The government. Who dramatically increases the cost of your house, car, and health insurance with useless regulations? The government. Who puts all sorts of laws in place that you don’t agree with and threatens to put you in prison or alternately, just shoot you if you don’t obey them? The government. Who can draft you and send you off to a war that you don’t agree with? The government. Who literally told people during COVID that they weren’t allowed to open their own businesses and sell their products to willing customers? Who demanded that unvaccinated people be fired for no good reason? Who refused to allow landlords to evict deadbeats who just chose not to pay their rent? The government.
If I think Apple’s CEO Tim Cook (net worth: 2 billion dollars) is a jerk, I can choose not to buy any Apple products. If I think it’s outrageous that the government gets to collect taxes on a house I already bought or I want to opt out of Social Security, there’s very little I can do about it. Sure, if I don’t like how the government is using my money or running my country, I can vote to put different people in power, but most of the time, nothing changes. Either things get blocked in Congress, the courts throw up roadblocks, bureaucrats thwart a fix, or the politicians lie to us once again… and all the things you don’t like about government tend to stay in place.
What this means is that in every way, shape, and form, the government is a much bigger problem than the wealthy. Yet, what does the government do all day long? It tries to convince you that your REAL problem is the rich – but it’s not at all. Nobody reading this is poor because Larry Ellison or the Walton family has so much money. Also, all those claims that they’re “not paying their fair share” are ridiculous. The wealthiest Americans are already paying an inordinate amount of taxes:
So, you can see that the rich are already paying through the nose, and guess what? Even if they pay more, the government will just waste it. No person with half a brain can look at this chart and think the problem is that the government doesn’t have enough revenue or if the government squeezes more money out of rich people that it will fix anything:
It’s important to understand all of this because there is a consistent pattern that has been played out over and over again in nations that have become too socialistic.
It goes roughly like so:
1) The government gets too big and spends too much.
2) The government then inflates the currency to make their debt cheaper and spurs on the economy.
3) Inflation hurts the poor and middle class, leading to them getting angry.
4) The government blames the wealthy and corporations for their problems while continuing to overspend and inflate the currency.
5) The government raises taxes on the wealthy higher and higher, which slows down the economy and causes wealthy people to flee to greener pastures.
6) The people get extremely angry about the slow economy and inflation driving them into the poorhouse.
7) The government continues to blame the wealthy and puts price controls into place to placate the people.
8) Shortages start occurring because of the price controls and the government responds by confiscating businesses, which it runs into the ground as inflation gets completely out of control and the economy implodes.
This is EXACTLY the direction America is headed in and a big part of the process is the government shifting the blame for all the problems they’re causing to the rich. You don’t need to love the rich. You don’t need to think they do no wrong. But you do need to understand that if we allow the government to trick people into blaming the rich for the problems coming out of DC, it’s going to end very badly for our country.
Keep the focus on the real problem, which is our own government, and maybe we won’t end up like Weimar Germany or Argentina one day. Maybe.
100 fucking percent! Thanks for laying it out so plainly John.
Good essay, John. As I was watching the SOTU address- (mainly to see if Biden would keel over midway; no such luck)- of course he went there. Soak the rich, and blame Trump's tax cuts. What people like Biden and his left wing goofballs like Bernie and Fauxcahontas can't grasp is that a corporate tax is a second level of tax that puts the US at an economic disadvantage. I studied tax policy in an advanced course at a left-wing law school, and one of the only sure ways my professor knew would jump start a socialist economy was a zero percent corporate tax rate. Dividends and salaries are already taxed. The US has always had one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, Trump passed tax cuts to influence wealthy people to bring their money back onshore, and it was working. Then CoVid and the worse plague, dependence on government via Biden's "stimulous" spending handouts kicked off this massive inflation and deficit spiral... But why not demonize, in this case the rich, when it's so much easier than reasoning and logic.