An excellent retropective and editorial by Ismael Hernandez: Adopt Rich Person this Year! Walking the narrow streets of my hometown in the Puerto Rico of the late 70s, I often thought about injustice, “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” My father, a committed Marxist, taught me that those dilapidated streets, our dependency on “La Prera” (Puerto Rico Emergency Relief Administration), and our poverty were the results of American Capitalism and greed. My duty was to help destroy America and I joined him in the fight against Empire. The workers produced the wealth that fed the wallets of a few American pigs who abused our people, throwing crumbs at them. It was all about the surplus value motivating Capitalism’s unjust economic system. One day, however, we would efface these pathologies of the present age and bring about the Socialist utopia, heaven on earth. Not much has changed since then. I mean, my political views have changed but the same analysis remains alive and well. The irony is that such ideology of class envy resides now in the halls of congress, university classrooms controlled by arrogant elites, and the cocktail parties of wealthy American leftist. I was rescued from the Marxist lie by a mother who pressed me to look for a world of possibilities she never enjoyed; possibilities that existed precisely in the economic context of a market economy. Eventually, and coming to America, my lungs were filled with the breadth of true freedom. Here, I was hit with the two-by-four of the reality of a great system I have misjudged. The contrast made me realize that I grew up in a time of transition from an agricultural and backward economy into a modernized one. Capitalism was not the problem, it was the painful solution! A solution still absent in my island and being abandoned here. But, successful Americans adhering to my now abandoned premises? How could that be! These elites are spoiled brats living in a country that created the greatest movement of prosperity in human history and yet remain unfazed by the affluence they enjoy. The poor have become a “cause” to keep them engaged amidst the boredom of already satisfied appetites. They are the luckiest socialists on earth; they can think like socialists, they just don’t have to live ones! A couple of years back, self-described socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, spent nine hours on the floor of the Senate lambasting “the rich.” In listening to his filibustering rhetoric I thought of how cathartic must it be for a privileged man like him to attack those who are nothing but the living evidence of his error. While complaining that the top 1 percent of taxpayers earned 20 percent of America’s Adjusted Gross Income in 2008, he forgot to mention that they also paid 38 percent of all income taxes. The top 5 percent earned 34.7 percent but paid 58.7 percent of taxes. The top 10 earned 45.8 percent and paid 69.9. Socialists like Sanders think that such contribution is not enough simply because the successful are, well, successful. The fact that the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers generated 12.8 percent of Gross Domestic Income and paid only 2.7 percent of taxes is lost in the rhetoric of envy. As a budget battle approaches we again hear the same voices, the same rhetoric of class struggle, the same attacks on producers. So, my recommendation for a sound program is to adopt a rich person and say thank you to him or her. After all, there is no population more “at risk” than the rich! They are an endangered species in need of protected status. We must offer an affirmative action program to leverage against decades of frontal attacks against them. Can I have a witness! Yes, adopt one and say thank you. Thank you for your self-interest that feeds the engine of invention. Thank you as you produce the jobs that “the poor” need. Thank you for being generous with your own money. Thank you for depending on yourselves instead of depending on the Bernie Sanders of this world. And thank you because, even in a country rapidly descending into collectivism, you help to keep freedom alive. https://facebook/ismael.hernandez.52035
Posted on: Mon, 12 Aug 2013 01:31:29 +0000