Oh No! America Makes More Rich Than Ever Before

By John Ransom

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Yes, this is how bad it’s become.

More people than ever before are becoming rich. And it’s really not fair.

At least that’s the conclusion the Associated Press reaches in a new survey presumably designed to help president Obama’s “It’s-all-the-rich-people’s-fault-and-certainly-has-nothing-to-do-with-anything-I’VE-done” 2014 election tour.

“Fully 20 percent of U.S. adults become rich for parts of their lives,” says the Associated Press, “wielding outsize influence on America's economy and politics. This little-known group may pose the biggest barrier to reducing the nation's income inequality.”

Oh no!

They don’t go on to explain exactly HOW this group poses “the biggest barrier to reducing the nation's income inequality,” but who needs facts and logic when there is a campaign to be won?

My guess is that since MANY people move in and out of the top two percent of earners, it messes with the statistics. Income mobility, in other words, makes the myth of “income inequality” appear bigger than liberals actually made up previously.

It was much better when the top-earners were a small segment of society who could prevent the riff-raff from fouling up the nicer sections of town…and stuff presidential elections with successful millionaires like Mitt Romney, who-- whatever else one might say about him—would not have fumbled the launch of a Romneycare for America! website.

And as far as influence goes: We shouldn’t listen to those bad people in the top two percent of earners who actually know how to successfully launch a website or medical practice or insurance company.

It’s much better to follow the dictates of a man who became famous for being famous and remains famous for little else he’s done-- because, truthfully, he’s done nothing successfully except campaign.

Nothing.

But here’s the rich people’s real sin says the AP: “In a country where poverty is at a record high, today's new rich are notable for their sense of economic fragility. They've reached the top 2 percent, only to fall below it, in many cases. That makes them much more fiscally conservative than other Americans, polling suggests, and less likely to support public programs, such as food stamps or early public education, to help the disadvantaged.”

Maybe that’s because they resent how hard the government has made it to become successful in the first place and stay successful in the second place.

The AP says the rate of people who become affluent has doubled since the 1979.

They define affluence by making $250,000 or more in one year. And they note that even when incomes don’t put them in the top 2 percent of earners in a year, the new rich still make more than $100,000 per year.

And it’s in these details that the Associated Press shows the unreality of journalists’ and academics’ point of view.

People who make more than $250,000 in a year are salespeople or small business owners who are aren’t given anything by an enlightened government, but rather have to EARN money every year.

Build it? Yes they did. By the skin of their teeth and the sweat of their brow.

And the proof that they did is that they can’t do it every year. If it was as simple as relying on others and government, like applying for food stamps, they could be successful every year.

And here’s the perverse part of it.

When they have those big years, the years where they are “wielding outsize influence on America's economy and politics” the government wants to come in and take more and more of that money, even though next year their income may be half what it was this year.

These people aren’t journalists living on salary or academics living off of government grants. They are the workhorses of the US economic machine.They make journalism and journalism professors possible.

They start at zero dollars in income every year. Everyone should have to do what they for a few years.

And when they have big years, we should encourage them to put away that extra $25,000 for their kids’ college or buy that variable annuity policy or pay down their mortgage or build that cabin in the mountains.

Instead, the government shakes them down for a piece of the action making it more difficult for them to hire a homebuilder who employs carpenters and drywall hangers and plumbers and electricians—and the trade apprentices. And thus the bosses then don’t get to show the apprentices how they too can become affluent in great years and very well-off in middling years.

And this is where the liberal and academic perversity takes its final form.

The apprentices want nothing more than the opportunity to rise too, no matter race, creed, color.

And for their own good-- as a matter of statistics-- liberals want them to stay right where they are.

There’s an election to be won after all.