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Read other letters about this article
You know, I am the first to agree that our economy is in trouble, but I do get very nervous when I start hearing all this "eat the rich" hyperbole. One nice thing about it, though, is that it makes it easy for me to distinguish between those with a real understanding of economics and those without. The author of this article, it appears, is in the latter category.
"A record number of Americans are receiving food stamps," we are alarmingly told at the outset of the piece. But why is this the case? Did the rich cause these poor, wretched, souls to go on the dole by, according to Leonard, "gorge[ing] themselves on 20 percent of the pie?" The assumption made here, and made by all Marxist economists, is that there is a kind of finite amount of goodies in the world. If someone has a million dollars, that's a million less for the rest of us. Preposterous bullshit.
We get more incendiary language like, "allowing the rich to grab such a huge percentage of national wealth..." What the hell is "national wealth"? Do people get rich by "grabbing" it? Man! I've never "grabbed" any wealth that I'm aware of.
I'd like to see some detail on these stats. I'm willing to bet that, for the most part, this 1% consists of highly educated, hard-working, enterprising risk-takers. I don't thik that Sam Walton, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, or any other of those greedy bastards "grabbed" any "national wealth." (but they sure have created a lot)
Wealth isn't a pinata folks. We aren't all muscling each other aside to get the best piece of candy. We all create wealth when we supply a demand. I'll grant that there's a bit more to it than this, but you get the idea.
The banks and american consumers both made bad decisions and will pay for it. Nuff said.
Oil is getting too expensive? Invest in oil futures. Health care costs are getting out of control? De-regulate the industry and costs will decline--as they invariably do whenever the idiocracy calling itself the Government of the United States takes its hands off the wheel.
