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The 1% And Pies For Prosperity
The Mission statement from OccupyWallStreet.org reads, in part, as follows: ”#ows is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations. The movement is inspired by popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and aims to expose how the richest 1% of people are writing the rules of an unfair global economy that is foreclosing on our future.”
Also, the mission statement of The Alliance for Global Justice, the nonprofit organization that handles the money transfers from financial supporters to the various “occupy“ groups, reads: ”…We recognize that the concentration of wealth and power is the root cause of oppression requiring us to work together across ideologies, issues and communities…”
In a recent Huffington Post article titled “Reawakening the Radical Imagination,” contributor Matt Sledge wrote that Occupy Wall Street (OWS) is ”a loosely organized group of activists concerned about growing income inequality, corporate greed and the global influence of powerful financial institutions.” He also commented on its supporters by noting that President Barack Obama and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have given it (OWS) a nod.
Yes, no doubt they have, since the OWS mission closely resembles that promoted by President Obama, and exactly fits his strategy of blaming “greedy Wall Street Tycoons” for his own policy failures. Although Obama’s 2008 campaign message was carefully managed to hide his radical anti-capitalist roots, his real political philosophy sometimes showed through during the campaign’s unscripted encounters, like his conversation with ”Joe the Plumber,” when he said that everyone would be better off if we spread the wealth around. Implicit in this ”spread the wealth” doctrine of Obama, OWS, The Alliance for Global Justice and all other socialist/progressive wealth redistribution supporters is the commonly held belief that the success of the 1% is what causes the poor to be poor. Obama’s spiritual mentor, the Reverend Wright, expressed the position succinctly when he said ,” White greed leaves the world in need.”
But is that assertion correct? The proponents of this anti-capitalist political philosophy almost never feel the need to explain exactly how the financial success of the “1%” causes everyone else to be poorer. When an explanation is offered, it is usually accompanied by an exasperated sigh and a “pie” illustration that shows how one person taking a bigger piece of the economic pie will leave everyone else with smaller pieces. That illustration assumes, of course, that the economic goods and services produced by a society are a fixed, finite asset that is unaffected by the efforts of the greedy 1%, who only take more than their share, without contributing anything positive.
In truth, exactly the opposite is normally true. The 1% are the highly successful entrepreneurs and executives who make the pie much larger or add new pies, that never previously existed. Henry Ford, Bill Gates, and every other successful producer adds jobs and wealth to the society that did not exist prior to their efforts, and no successful society can exist without their genius. We live in a time and nation with the greatest material wealth in the history of mankind because of the extraordinary past efforts of the 1% to mass produce large quantities of goods at an extremely low cost. We owe a debt of gratitude to Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon, and every highly productive 1%er who built this nation’s industries and left us an economy that made us the wealthiest people on earth. When the “good” done by these industrial Titans is normally described, mention is made of their generous charitable giving or their foundations, but, in truth, the real good they did was building businesses that multiplied our wealth and made this country the most prosperous on earth.
When the 1% work to build their own wealth, they also create jobs and opportunities for others that would not exist without their efforts. Russia, China and the other communist nations have already demonstrated that demonizing the producers only leads to oppression and poverty. The OWS demonstrators and other similar neosocialists enjoy prosperity and freedom because of the efforts of the 1%, and fail to understand that it is they, and not the 1%, who stand in the tradition of thinkers who enslaved and impoverished almost half of the world’s population for much of the 20th Century.
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Recent Posts by Mike Gibson |
You make a terrific point Mike. The left often uses a “zero sum game” approach to economic theory. It’s illustrated by your example of the prosperity pie, but it also rears it’s head in tax policy arguments that assume if you raise taxes, you will get more revenue…not taking into consideration the more dynamic aspects of economic reality that higher taxes can slow growth and actually lower revenue.
It’s as if the liberals brain is to linear to contemplate deeper consequences of actions beyond the expected result. Of course, that’s the problem with government programs in general…the expected result rarely transpires.
One of the most common arguments I’ve had with occupiers is their belief that the root of the problem is big business buying influence and secretly running everything to our detriment. It seems such a foreign concept to them that only government has a monopoly on power and if government were actually limited, all the corporate donations in the world wouldn’t be able to buy favors. The government would have no power to grant them.
Mindnumbing.
Thanks for joining our House Guest ranks. I look forward to more from you.
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Thanks Christian
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Hi Mike,
Your comments and observations are on target. What we’re witnessing with ows and with Mr. Obama’s recent comments about the “rich paying their fair share” and with Mr. Biden’s comments yesterday about ” lifting up the middle class” is right out of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals playbook where the socialist work-from-within guru advocates coopting the middle class since that’s where the power and the votes are…this is 1960′s and 1970′s socialism on parade in 2011…problem for the Alinsky socialists is that with the advent of a plethora of conservative outlets for the truth….like the Heritage Foundation…like Fox, like conservative commentators, no longer does the garbage espoused by Obama and Biden and the ows socialist go unchallenged and uncorrected. Just this morning WBT 1110 ran a CBS radio report about the Veterans hiring bill being voted on by the House and the report ended with a statement that Republicans had killed the President’s jobs bill. This was an obvious attempt to carry the administration’s water and propagate the “evil Republicans job killing mantra” that the mainstream media and the administration advocate. But times have changed….we now know, courtesy of the USSR, Greece, and Italy and the crisis in Eurpoe, that big government socialism is a failure…government spending doesn’t create jobs, in fact it has just the opposite effect…and that across the board tax cuts for businesses and individuals works every time its tried(Kennedy and Reagan tax cuts)…now of course, the socialist media outlets will continue to try to promote ows and the President’s agenda, but today, more and more Americans know the truth…we’re living the President’s failed agenda of massive government spending and high tax rates…and we know they are failures…and we know we’re not the 1%….we’re the 53%….we’re the 53% of Americans that pay all of the federal taxes in this country, while 47% don’t have any skin in the game and don’t pay their true fair share. Yes, now we’re informed, educated, and we could fix our economic and financial crisis in about 15 minutes if we got the socialists out of way and cut taxes and spending and as Nike says….”Just do it.”
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Mike #2, you forgot PunditHouse.
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Government is always the problem and it is getting worse.
http://www.businessinsider.com/imminent-threat-2011-11
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thanks for this link.everyone on “the” pundithouse should read it.the accelerating expansion of government tyranny is beyond what alot of folks could have imagined.how true the words of jefferson;
“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent they conquered.”
― Thomas Jefferson
if the criminal globalist banking cartel,i.e.,the federal reserve, isn’t routed from this country,and soon,it’s all over for liberty.
“Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice can not sleep forever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference!”
― Thomas Jefferson,
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I have no problem with the authors premises here.
The only thing America must promise its citizens is mobility, the ability to improve one’s lot in life. So far we have managed to keep that dream alive.
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