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Our position on the "Issue" of "Income Inequality"

by Conservativity Staff,
Originally Posted: 12/18/2011 1:51:20 PM

The left, looking for yet another issue where it can assert strong control over the lives of Americans, has now brought the "issue" of "income inequality" to the fore.  The concept behind this is to demonize the wealthy because they have more than the poor.  It’s a driver (although not the sole driver) behind the "Occupy Wall Street" protests.  Barack Obama has taken to demonizing the "wealthy" in terms akin to the infamous Richard Gephardt calumny that the wealthy are "the winners of Life’s Lotto."  What evil tripe.  It’s a combination of a lust for power, frosted with covetous jealousy at the success of others.

Even this week, Barack Obama stated, "In the last few decades, the average income of the top 1 percent has gone up by more than 250 percent to $1.2 million per year. ... And yet, over the last decade the incomes of most Americans have actually fallen by about 6 percent. Now, this kind of inequality -- a level that we haven’t seen since the Great Depression -- hurts us all."  As the Washington Examiner pointed out in an article (read here), Mr. Obama compared three decades of increase to the wealthy, to one decade of what supposedly happened to the less wealthy.  When comparing identical date ranges, the wealthy grew 250 percent, while the less wealthy grew 46 percent.  Everyone is getting richer.  That holds true, even in this economic disaster (brought about by the Left’s profligate drunken-sailor spending binges) in which we now languish.

"Income inequality" is a phantom issue.  It’s a pretense for government to take from the rich that which they earned through innovation and industry, and apportion it as it sees fit to those that they deem less "fortunate."  In so doing, the Left seeks to entrench its power in the same manner that Julius Caesar entrenched his dictatorship to the people -- bribery.  The first two Caesars murdered the Roman Republic and set themselves up as dictators by buying off the people, and in so doing, they eroded Roman liberties, such as they were, to a saddening degree.  The Left, led by the most radical socialist to ever achieve the highest office in this land, seek now to grab the same power.

Income inequality is not only a pretense for the Left to take power and money for itself, it is also a straw man.  It relies on the caricature of the rich as evil robber-barons who seek to gather all wealth to themselves and deny the masses any ability to sustain themselves.  This straw man is especially frail.  Let’s look at the late Steve Jobs (after all, I type this article on an iMac, as I wear an iPhone on my belt and have an iPad a few feet away).  Steve Jobs was extremely wealthy, to the tune of $8 billion at the time of his demise.  He also was a leftist, and placed Al Gore on Apple’s board of directors, and offered to help Mr. Obama succeed by redefining his position toward business (said offer was rebuffed).  Apple sells iPhones for $299-399 new, after cell phone company contract incentives.  iPads go for up to $900.  iMacs sell in the thousands.  Apple accessories are expensive.  On the other hand, Apple serves its customers as if they were, one and all, royalty.  Apple stands behind its products in a manner that leaves every other computer seller shamefully humiliated.  If Steve Jobs’ goal were to hoard wealth to himself, and to impoverish the little guy, Mr. Jobs would have driven himself into ruin.  Apple depends upon everyone having disposable income!  So does every company!  ExxonMobil wants the little guy to have money for cross-country trips.  Wal-Mart wants the little guy to have money to come in and buy the apparel, electronics and food it sells.  Ford wants the little guy to have money to buy its cars.  And so on, and so forth.

The trouble is that wealth buys influence.  Large businessmen can make themselves heard by tens of millions of people.  Witness how Donald Trump sits regally in New York as GOP presidential candidates come to visit him.  Why?  Trump’s endorsement is a page one headline.  If Mr. Gingrich has Trump’s endorsement, it will have an effect on his candidacy (whether said effect is or is not positive, I decline to speculate).

Hence the Left seeks to demonize the wealthy, in order to convert their money it its own ends.  Enact confiscatory tax rates on those who are most productive, and convert their money into government funds.  Then take those funds and spend them as the Left sees fit, in a manner to create the most dependency from the largest number of persons.  In the end, people will be less motivated to succeed, because: (i) The government will give them money for nothing; and (ii) The government will take their reward if they do something worthwhile.  This is the cruelty and folly of equality of result, which can only be achieved by denying equality of opportunity.

Our position is that "income inequality" is a phantom issue that means nothing except to those trying to stoke covetous jealousy of the productive and successful.  As the Left becomes more brazen about its true colors during the 2012 election cycle, the people have an historic opportunity to reclaim the essential natural rights upon which this country was founded.  Will we be repulsed at the notion of becoming Greece 2.0 and vote for ourselves liberty and responsibility?  Or will we drink the "progressive" Kool-Aid and vote our rights away to dependency upon a Europe-style bureaucratic plutocracy?  I don’t know.  What I do know is this:  A vote for the Left is a vote to kill the Republic known as the United States of America, and to replace it with the beginning of the second coming of the Caesars.