Is Being Wealthy A Crime?

 by Joe Siano

In a recent Gizmodo article, Matt Novak observes that, “It’s obviously a crime that billionaires even exist in a civilized society”.  His rationale is that “there simply aren’t enough hours in a day to justify the accumulation of so much wealth.”

 

Mr, Novak muses whether billionaires should even be “allowed to exist”. 

 

There is plenty to unpack here.

 

The Scale Has Changed

Since the inception of the Federal Reserve in 1913, the passage of legal tender laws and the abolition of hard currency, the U.S. dollar has lost over 96% of its purchasing power.  Being a millionaire just isn’t what it used to be.  If you had one million dollars in 1913, you would need about $100 million to be just as rich today. A magnate holding a fortune of $10 million in 1913 would need a billion to be as wealthy in 2021.    At the height of his earning power, the great Babe Ruth made $80,000 per season.  Today the average Major Leaguer earns over $4 million per year.  The Major League minimum is $570,000 per year – more than 7x what the Babe made.

 

John D. Rockefeller was America’s richest man at his death in 1937.  He parlayed a $4,000 investment in a Cleveland oil refinery to amass a fortune of $1.4 billion.  Adjusted for inflation, this projects to $340 billion making Bezos, Musk, Gates, Buffet and the like look like second-raters.

 

The point is do not get freaked by the word “billionaire”. 

 

What is Wealth?

The word “wealth” is derived from the old English word, “weal”.  An etymology of wealth reveals that:

 

‘Wealth’ comes from the old English ‘weal’, which means ‘wealth, welfare, and wellbeing’. Weal is in turn related to the older word ‘wel’, meaning ‘in a state of good fortune, welfare, or happiness’.

‘Wel’ gives birth to ‘welth’ around 1250 AD, and ‘welthi’ a century or so later.

 

What kind of person resents another person’s well-being?  Why would you wish ill-fortune on another of God’s creatures just because, at this moment in time, they may be a bit better off than you?

 

This is just plain old “envy”, one of the seven deadly sins.  Or perhaps “greed” or covetousness. It is nothing short of malicious to wish ill-will on a person simply because their achievements outstripped yours.

 

As previously noted in the Gizmodo story, the author ponders whether billionaires should be allowed to exist.  The implication is that he believes not. 

 

Then the question becomes how would he dispose of these supposed parasites?  Would he chop off their heads as the Jacobins did with the aristocrats?   Or ship them off to gulags as Stalin did with the bourgeoisie and reactionaries?  Or to concentration camps as the Nazi’s did with the Jews?  Or to “re-education” camps as the Maoists do with their dissidents?

 

Maybe he has something new in mind.  Freedom’s opponents are always inventive when it comes to genocide, torture and oppression.

 

Wealth, Utility and Well-Being

A more technical economic word for well-being might be utility.

 

Austrian economics is rooted in the a priori observation that human beings take purposeful action to move from a state of discomfort to a state of less discomfort.  Acting human beings seek utility, an improvement in their well-being.

 

A corollary statement to that is that human beings prefer a state of rest to a state of activity.  However to feed, clothe and shelter themselves,  people will engage in activity necessary to procure these ends, 

 

In the primitive state – a state of scarcity – the hunter/gatherer economy, people need to forage all day long to survive.  Even in traditional agrarian economies, life for most folks was unending toil to make ends meet.  The old saying goes, “A man may work from sun to sun, but a woman’s work is never done”.

 

The Democrat Party imagines that it created the 40-hour work week.  The reality is this.   The growth of worker productivity grew exponentially due to mechanization, capital accumulation, technical innovation and competitive pressure starting with the Industrial Revolution.  It has only accelerated as digital tools enabled industry to discover and apply new consumer and production technologies at lightning speed.

 

Due to advances in labor productivity, workers can satisfy their needs for food, clothing, shelter and even some luxuries in much less time.  Thus Austrian economics also posits that leisure time is a luxury good which a great many workers wish to purchase at the cost of working for 40 hours or less and making less money.  To this point, the modern world now boasts a vast leisure industry to fill the empty hours of workers including TV and movies, video games, resorts, casinos, pro sports, concerts, theater, amusement parks, bars and restaurants not to mention adult entertainment.

 

Creative geniuses, entrepreneurs, inventors and visionaries stand apart from the 9-5 crowd.  A handful of highly driven people such as Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and many more have created products, services and processes that untold millions of people believe have made their lives better and easier.    By delivering utility, by enhancing the well-being of millions of everyday people – by adding to their weal – the world’s best innovators have, in the process, amassed fortunes for themselves.  Is that a crime?  Mr Novak believes so,

 

Mr. Novak totally misfires when he asserts that, “there simply aren’t enough hours in a day to justify the accumulation of so much wealth.”  Consider this.  If an entrepreneur provided just $10 of utility to 100 million people (less than one-third the U.S. population), presto, he or she is a billionaire.  About 1.5 billion people use iPhones, another 1.5 billion Android devices and another 1.5 billion Windows computers.    That’s a lot of people who feel their lives are made better by just these three products. 

 

Shouldn’t the developers and stakeholders be paid?  Are they stealing?  If Mr. Novak were such a compelling writer that everyone in America paid $10 to receive his missives, he would be a billionaire three times over.  Do you think he would refuse payment or give it away?

 

If I were a Rich Man

 Not only do the capitalist top dogs enrich themselves, they create investment opportunities and good jobs that elevate the material condition of society as a whole.

 

If I were rich, I'd have the time that I lack
To sit in the synagogue and pray.
And maybe have a seat by the Eastern wall.
And I'd discuss the holy books with the learned men, several hours every day.
That would be the sweetest thing of all.

-From Fiddler on the Roof

 

Tevye the milkman pines to be rich so that he can make life better for his family but most of all so that he can attend to higher, spiritual matters.

 

Maslow's hierarchy of needs holds that once humans have secured their material needs their focus moves to the transcendent.  To  truth, beauty, poetry, philosophy and God.

 

By making us better off, our billionaire brothers and sisters liberate us to be truly human and to contemplate the deeper mysteries of life and its meaning.

 

Great art, philosophy and theology are produced in affluent societies with the backing of wealthy patrons.  It is consumed by people with cultivated minds and tastes. In his treatise, Wealth, Andrew Carnegie, mused that the highest calling of those blessed with riches was through public endowments in the arts, sciences and other civilizing institutions.  Private philanthropy makes a nation great, not government programs.

 

For all of their faults, the billionaire class has done more to make like better than any government ever could.  In fact, I would argue that the government only makes life worse.

 

So, I have no problem with the very rich legally avoiding Income Tax.  We understand that the wealthy have the best security to protect their homes, persons and businesses from assault theft and pillaging.  It stands to reason that they would also command the finest resources to protect themselves from the marauding taxman,

 

Our world is better off when they invest, spend and give away their resources as they see best. After all, they are smarter and more productive than any Beltway bureaucrat or legislator.

 

 

 

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The Politician and the Producer

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"Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction." 
- Paul Simon

 

It Can Happen Here. It Already Has.

 by Joe Siano

 Any family court in the land will accept “Irreconcilable differences” as a valid reason to amicably dissolve a marriage.  These differences commonly include:

1.    Disagreements on finances and debt problems

2.    Loss of trust in the relationship

3.    Work that causes protracted long-distance separation

4.    Lack of sexual intimacy

5.    Personality conflicts

6.    Communication difficulties

7.    Failure to help in the household

8.    Differing political opinions

9.    In-law and familial involvement

10.  Growing apart due to different life goals and interests

Irreconcilable differences, “a long train of abuses and usurpations”, precipitated the divorce of Great Britain’s American colonies from the Motherland.  The split was anything but amicable.  The Brit’s tried to maintain possession of their colonies by force of arms.  Nonetheless, the Colonists prevailed.

America’s Southern States voiced similar complaints when they opted out the of Union in the 1860s.   These included “frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States”.  Once more the incumbent government  contested cessation by force of arms.  In this instance, the aggrieved party lost and was forced to remain in the relationship.

Both the Colonists and the Confederates felt that they were laboring under Irreconcilable differences.  They saw no political means to redress their grievances.  The Colonies had no representation the British Parliament. The Southerners faced an insurmountable demographic and electoral disadvantage relative to the North.

However, to say that the Union preserved unity by “force of arms” is a gross understatement.

Military historians note that the Union was not content with military victories on the battlefield.  The Union committed to a campaign of “total war” – a war of annihilation and subjugation of the rebellious population.  Historian Lance Janda elaborates:

“…if "total war" is defined as using ‘military force against the civilian population of the enemy,’ then the          Civil War stands as a watershed in the American evolution of total war theory. The application of force against an enemy's noncombatants      and resources, the central tenet of total war, had been used since the dawn of civilization when it suited political and military ends. But Union Army commanders were the first in American history to use these tactics on a widespread scale, and they played a crucial role not only in the subjugation of the South, but in the conquest of Native Americans as well.

 

A doctrine that was anathema in 1860 emerged from the Civil War as the weapon of choice on the frontier, and by 1880 total war theory dominated the mainstream of American military thought.  To early Civil War leaders, these destructive tactics seemed revolutionary, for they contradicted codes of behavior developed during the        Enlightenment; codes which attempted to spare civilians the travesties of war.

 Northern commanders, however, faced with a defiance unprecedented in American history, turned to total war because no other strategy held the promise of ultimate victory.

 As one pillaging soldier explained in South Carolina: "Here is where treason began, and, by God, here is where it shall end!" Union generals did not invent the tactics or the rationale behind total war; these had been present for centuries. But they did rediscover them …. and lent to them vigorous prosecution and eloquent justification.

 

Bringing the Southern states back into the Union required the complete subjugation of the Confederate people”

 

Our Pledge of Allegiance asserts that America is “one nation under God”.  I don’t accept the “one nation” part anymore.  Marxism, multiculturalism, Critical Race Theory and history denying Cancel Culture have frayed the ties that bind to the snapping point.  The differences between Red State and Blue State Americans seem irreconcilable.  Political resolution is unlikely as the soft coup is well underway in D.C.  Restraints on single-party rule are being dismantled.

 

In any other enterprise, be it a romance, marriage, a business or employment situation, normal folks would take the Dave Mason solution, acknowledge that we “just disagree” and negotiate a civil separation.   

 

The top dogs of the United States government are not regular folks.   America’s governing class has a demonstrated preference for  the John Lennon option.  They would rather see their citizens dead than living happily under a new government of their own choosing.  They implemented this policy with extreme prejudice in the past.  One would expect the same response if challenged with state secession once more.

 

If the “under God” portion of our Pledge is true, let’s pray that in His mercy, he allows Americans to settle their differences amicably, particularly if separation is in the cards.

 

Anticipating that worse may come to worst, Americans are buying guns in record numbers.  The Feds are armed to the teeth.  The United States boasts the world’s largest regular armed forces.  In addition, Washington D.C. has armed Federal law enforcement agents such as the FBI, the ATF, the DEA and Homeland Security to call upon.  And finally, our mail carriers and 75 other Federal non-law enforcement agencies are also heavily armed for no apparent reason.

 

Let’s hope that when push finally comes to shove, the prospect of brutally suppressing a heavily armed populace and the attendant international PR nightmare will dissuade D.C. from pursuing the path that it chose in 1860.

 

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Impeach The Imperial City

Burn The Constitution - Today

 

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"Half the people are stoned and the other half are waiting for the next election.
Half the people are drowned and the other half are swimming in the wrong direction." 
- Paul Simon