My Money is Okay, But Your Money is the Root of All Evil

It is amazing how often I hear liberals talk about wealthy people. They seem to be obsessed with them, knowing exactly how much money they spent on this or that house or boat or car or outfit. And most of the time they are discussing these things (which is none of their business, anyway), they do so with this resentful, sour look. Now, personally, wealth doesn’t bother me; I would like to be wealthy myself, as a matter of fact.

But a lot of liberals talk as though wealthy people are evil simply because they are wealthy. But here’s the thing: they usually only hate wealthy people who became wealthy by hard work. They never seem to hate movie or television stars, pop stars, liberal writers, liberal politicians, or professional athletes.

This is very strange. I mean, a movie star or pop singer can make millions of dollars for a few months of mediocre work, and he or she only makes himself or herself (and maybe an agent) rich. And they get paid outrageous sums even when they produce garbage. Moreover, the money they make usually comes from teenagers who sponged the money off of their parents. In fact, while I like to be entertained as much as the next person, I cannot see that they provide anything of practical utility to anyone.

In contrast, a top oil company executive usually works 60 to 70 hours a week, month after month, keeping tens of thousands of people employed, keeping food on their tables, roofs over their heads, and medical care for their families, plus they try to make sure all the stockholders in the company, like union pensioners, get a good return on their investment and can retire in comfort. Oh, not to mention, they make their money off of people like me, because they provide gas for me to travel and so that all the goods I want to buy can be delivered to my local supermarket.

Now, to my mind, if someone can do all that and still bring in a hefty profit for their company, I say: terrific! But a liberal just seethes at the fact that a person who does all that should get a few million in compensation. Keanu Reeves made $200 million off of the Matrix movies. (Astounding.) Yet I’m supposed to resent the CEO of Exxon? And it’s even worse than that. Because what the liberal wants to do is to tax the heck out of the CEO’s salary so that it can be given to some deadbeat on welfare.

To me, this demonstrates the stupidity of resenting wealth. A person only works hard if he or she obtains a benefit from the hard work. When you don’t get any benefit from hard work, you have a tendency to become lazy, and do only what gets you by. And when you give something to someone who is lazy because they are lazy, they continue to be lazy. The one thing liberals just can’t figure out is that the difference between wealthy people and poor people is seldom money. Oh, there is a second thing. The second thing they don’t get is that wealth is not a zero sum game. They don’t understand that wealth can be created.

And for those liberals who are scratching their heads, let me explain. There is one primary reason that countries like Japan and Switzerland are wealthy. And it has nothing to do with natural resources; both countries would be unable to grow enough food or mine enough ore or grow enough trees to support their populations. What they do have is people with a strong work ethic, and people who take pride in producing top quality goods. You see, it is still prestigious to own a Swiss watch, and people travel to Switzerland because they run things well—banks, hotels, resorts, spas, chocolate factories. And Japan produces top-quality automobiles and electronic equipment. A mere 40 years ago, the phrase “Made in Japan” used to be a joke—it meant something was cheap and shoddy. Not anymore. Today, it means something is made well and packaged attractively. (China has now taken over the cheap and shoddy department.) The Japanese work ethic created the fastest growing national economy the world has ever seen.

These countries have become wealthy primarily as a result of human effort—adding value to meager resources and inexpensive raw materials. This also explains, incidentally, why America is becoming poorer. The difference between wealth and poverty is: human effort. People can create wealth simply by the exertion of effort. For example, if two neighbors lived side by side in identical houses (which happens pretty often these days, with tract neighborhoods), and made identical salaries, but one person sat on his duff, watched television, and drank beer while the other person regularly mowed and watered his lawn, picked weeds, eradicated pests, tended the plants and trees, cleaned the house, maintained the structure, and so on, the weed-picker’s house would be worth more.

Yet, despite the obvious truth of this statement, the liberal mind simply cannot wrap itself around the idea that hard work—the right kind of hard work—can create wealth out of almost nothing. They, like their mentor Karl Marx, sit around on their duff thinking they are smart, and that, by virtue of being smart, they deserve to have the wealth that other people have created through effort. Or else, they equate hard work with simply spending a lot of hours digging up holes and filling them in, rather than actually producing anything of value. This is why we see so many silly bumper stickers.

Liberals want to live in a sort of fairyland of liberal meritocracy, where people who do things like spout liberal aphorisms at college universities live the lives of kings, while other people, like corporate executives, who actually have to bear responsibility for the tangible results of the decisions they make and produce goods that people actually want and need, get zilch. No wonder liberals are liberals. Basically, they don’t understand that a thing is worth only what someone else is willing to pay for it. And nobody wants to listen to college professors. Students only listen because their parents are paying for a college education, and because they want a lucrative job at a software company when they graduate.

I mean, the liberals got all steamed up because Cindy McCain wore a $20,000 dress. (How come they don’t mind when Jessica Simpson wears a $20,000 dress?) But they should be happy—ecstatic, in fact—that she’s wearing that dress. I mean, when a liberal buys a dress at Wal-Mart for $35, she (or he, I guess) is only supporting a lowly Chinese pinko running a sweatshop, whereas Cindy is supporting a New York City cocktail liberal or a snobby Paris socialist.

Now, Cindy’s family made its money distributing beer. If ever there was a family that earned its keep, Cindy’s family is it. They distribute a product that people are willing to pay for in either an up or a down economy. The liberals’ problem is that they think it is possible to create an economic system in which someone is willing to pay them a lot of money just to drink it.

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