Five Best Sentences

I’ve seen the accompanying meme quite a bit recently. Those posting it mean well, but it is full of inaccuracies and misleading sentiments. So while I know they didn't ask for responses, I just couldn’t let them go. My thoughts for each of them, in order...

1) Nobody is talking about legislating anyone out of prosperity. Even Warren's wealth tax, probably the most progressive out there, doesn't kick in until someone has over 50 million dollars. And it is only 2%. For the billionaire, it goes up to 6%. But the first 50 million isn’t touched. That won't be "legislating the wealthy out of prosperity."

2) This point makes the assumption that we're going to take money from people who work hard and give it to lazy people who don't want to work. But most people who are in poverty are already working. But even a full time job can't support a family of four anymore. The implication is that rich people are rich because they work hard, and poor people are poor because they're lazy. But you can bust your ass working full time at many jobs and still be in poverty.

3) Do you really think that rich people haven't "taken from somebody else?" The Walmart family are all billionaires, yet many Walmart employees, even full time ones, live in poverty. Seems to me that those rich people are getting rich off the backs of the workers.

4) Actually, you can. When a poor person gets more money, he spends it on material things because he has no choice. More people spending money means more consumption, more consumption means more jobs, more jobs means more income. And yes, more income means more wealth.

5) Very few people just don't work because they don't want to. Yes, there are some of course. But there are also a lot of very rich people who don't work either. Most of the people who could really benefit by higher taxes on the wealthy are already working. Most of them work very hard, yet they can't make ends meet, let alone get ahead. Think of the store clerk, the waitress, the social worker, the EMT, the laborer, the maid, the stock boy, the home healthcare worker, the busboy, or the teacher's aid. ALL of them work very hard, yet none of them are even close to wealthy.

6) I'm going to add one more. Although it's a common conservative talking point, almost nobody is suggesting socialism. (No, not even Bernie Sanders.) What people are asking for is a more equitable system mostly by higher taxes on those who can afford it. Even then, the tax rates suggested are lower than during the Eisenhower administration, when the top marginal rate was over 90%. America was just fine then. We still had rich people. But even the normal laborer could support a family of four on one income. Is that really such a racial idea?

7) What the heck, still one more. As long as the rich people have low or moderate income people preaching their message, nothing will change. I can guarantee that many people who echo the sentiments in the accompanying  post are decent people who struggle to make ends meet. Yet they trumpet this stuff, and the rich people laugh all the way to the bank. And the hard workers stay poor.