All Terrain Thinking

A Compendium of things I think are Important

Consequences In Life, Often Unanticipated

 

22.THE RICH & THE POOR

"The leaders of the French Revolution, from the beginning, excited the poor against the rich: this has made the rich poor, but it will never make the poor rich." - Fisher Ames. - 1800

Throughout history, there have been the rich and the poor. Without one, there could not be the other. If the poorest made $100,000 a year, and others made a hundred times that much, the lowest income would automatically be..."poor." The word "poor" is a comparative word. It has been the undisputed goal of the modern day politician and bureaucrat to equalize everyone, by taking from the haves, and giving it to the have nots, the rich being the despised, and the poor virtually worshipped. Nothing is too good for a poor person today. If you are poor, let's find another way of stealing from the rich! Such is not the way America was intended to be, and not the way it works with the least hard feelings, most efficiency and productivity, not to mention prosperity.

The Founders intended that a man should make of himself what he could, and be free to work hard…or sit under a tree. The poor weren't admired, and the rich weren’t hated, but rather the reverse. The rich were admired, because they had what it took, had made it, and the poor were admonished to get a job or an education. No one's wealth was to be confiscated, and no one was to get a handout from government. The very idea would have been anathema to the Founders.

One of the richest men that ever lived in America was Andrew Carnegie. Carnegie was born in Scotland at the very bottom of the pile. He worked in a mill, moved to America as a teen, following his Dad, who died when he was 16. He got a job in a cotton mill in Pittsburgh, later worked on a railroad and became fascinated with the idea of replacing wooden bridges with iron ones. He excelled at this job, and began to work in the iron industry, eventually making steel with the new Bessemer process. By 1892, Carnegie was producing more steel than all of Europe combined. He sold out to J.P. Morgan for $495 million, (at least $50 billion today) became the richest man in the world, and retired to Skibo, his castle in Scotland. J.P. Morgan turned Carnegie Steel into U.S. Steel, which became a world leader in production and technology, and after a brief subsidence in the 1960's and 70's is once again a world leader.

Carnegie made a literal fortune by hard work, study, and making brilliant decisions. To make a long story short, Carnegie died in 1919, and between 1901 and 1919, he had donated over $350 million to various charities. Today, that would amount to at least $30 trillion, an amount impossible to comprehend, all from profits in the private sector. Among the many beneficiaries of Carnegie's gifts, were the cities that received one of the 2,800 libraries he built for them, or the 6,000 churches who received a pipe organ from him. But this was microscopic, compared to his starting and endowing Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh, The Carnegie Hero's fund, The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the acoustically awesome Carnegie Hall in New York, and dozens of others. Other rich men did the same, be they a Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Hearst, or Ford.

After all, a man can only wear one suit of clothes at a time, sleep in one bed, and eat so much. The rest is surplus, and all rich persons, after satiating themselves with whatever their hearts desire, such as perhaps a grand mansion in Newport, a hundred servants, a yacht or private railroad car, still have hundreds of millions left to dispense or use as they see fit. Invariably, the rich built churches, universities, parks, and endowed wonderful institutions. While they were satisfying their whims, they hired people. They hired craftsmen to build their homes, swimming pools, and railroad cars. They hired servants, and paid them well. The rich found it impossible to do anything bad with their money, because however they spent it; they created jobs and prosperity; not laws, rules, and regulations. Every dime they spent or gave away, benefited society in some way. The rich built factories, railroads, and mills. They financed education and development. They invented, and made everyone's life ever so much better. Ford invented the production line, Carnegie started what became U.S. Steel, and "Commodore" Vanderbilt built the New York Central Railroad, even though he hated trains. He liked ships. Rockefeller sparked Standard Oil, and without Edison we might not have the light bulb, phonograph, or motion picture. Otis invented the elevator, and Seiberling, Goodrich and Goodyear the rubber tire, all getting filthy rich, and spreading it around generously to employees, colleges, universities, cities, and the needy. Rockefeller used to give out dimes for the fun of it, and those dimes would be worth almost five dollars today. Know anyone giving out five dollar bills today, "for the fun of it?" The rich were good for America. The rich never passed laws, nor taxed anyone. The regulations they wrote applied to their employees, not the entire nation. Please note that the previous are in the past tense. The reason is simple. There are no more truly rich, including Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, as most of the money is confiscated by government...literally. Government, rather than doing good things with it, stifles prosperity.

Imagine yourself filthy rich. You have already bought yourself a mansion, a jet plane, sumptuous wardrobe, and travel the world at will. You still have millions left. Assuming the government didn't take it away from you with confiscatory taxes, which is does, what could you possibly do with it that wouldn't benefit society? Wouldn't you want your name on a park, hospital wing, or college? Wouldn't your previous expenditures for the mansion, jet plane, clothes, and travel, have already benefited people, by giving them jobs? There is nothing a rich person can do with their money that doesn’t benefit society, be it furnish jobs, endow institutions, make films, finance buildings, help the poor, or what have you. The money spent, all furnishes prosperity. On the other hand, money seized by government, always has a deleterious effect on society, because it is spent on bureaucracy, rules, regulations, laws, waste, inefficiency, and funding of stupid projects and infernal 'programs.' Unearned gifts from government do not alleviate poverty, whereas money spent by the rich, provide jobs and prosperity. While this sounds absurd and different from what you may have been taught from childhood, think about it, use reason and logic, and you can’t help but come to that conclusion.

In September 1997, England's 37 year old "Princess Di" died in Paris in a hideous car crash, thanks to a chauffeur who was probably drunk. Less than a week later, Mother Teresa died of heart failure at age 87, in Calcutta India. The wags were quick to pronounce Mother Teresa the most righteous, and the one who did the most good works. I disagree. Compare the two. Mother Teresa spent her life in abject poverty. She was a nun who did selfless, heart warming acts, such as comforting the sick and diseased. She ministered to the poor her entire life, often went hungry, slept on a thin mattress, and will undoubtedly be made a 'saint' by the Catholic Church. Princess Di married too young, in an arranged marriage, and her husband, Prince Charles never loved her, but cheated with Camilla Parker Bowles, who was also married. Finally Di left him, divorced him, gained custody of their two sons, and was a rich, young, beautiful woman who gave of herself endlessly to various charities.

Mother Teresa's good works went to the grave with her, as she was poor, raised no money, had no children, and her legacy was one of selflessness. She lived a saintly life, and devoted herself to the sick, homeless, dying, and diseased. Princess Di died, and like Mother Teresa, became an instant martyr. The big difference is that Di's favorite charities will eventually receive perhaps a billion dollars in memory of her, and Mother Teresa's will get none. Princess Di traveled in splendor, and had the best in fashion and comfort. She was rich, which made the media slant their good words and favor towards Mother Teresa, because she was poor. Obviously, Princess Di's life produced far more good works and better results than Mother Teresa's. Di produced two handsome, intelligent boys, one of whom will become the King of England. Her charities will be copiously endowed, and perhaps will discover wonderful new medicines, build hospitals, and fix a lot of things. Mother Teresa will lie in her grave and be fondly remembered by millions, but which woman left the most to posterity? Not Mother Teresa, who lived in abject poverty, but Princess Di, who lived in the lap of luxury. Think about it, and decide whether it was the rich or the poor who did the most good works.

SOLUTIONS

The solution is for the D.C. thugs to stop stealing everyone's money. Rich people did far more good than the wealth redistributing D.C. dregs could ever do. The rich benefited the poor, because they were given jobs, which produced wealth, not handouts, which consume wealth. America would be infinitely poorer without the beneficence of the rich, who did not have their money seized by the state. The possibility of becoming truly rich today is remote. Profits are seized by government as fast as they are made, and used to support bureaucrats and godawful "programs," which certainly are not making the weak strong, but rather dependent and useless, while weakening the strong. There are over 400 billionaires in the world today, which is chicken feed, compared to the truly rich of a hundred years ago, who did such marvelous things. Carnegie gave away $30 trillion in 2001 dollars, remember? The Rockefellers, Vanderbilts, Goodyears, Fords, Edisons, and Bells all seem to have had spoilt, unmotivated, unappreciative kids who formed foundations with their inherited wealth. For some strange reason, left oriented people, who, in my opinion, give to all the wrong charities, head these foundations. I have no way of correcting this anomaly, but I'll bet the initiators of the wealth which made these foundations possible, would turn over in their graves if they could see how their hard work and brains are benefiting those whom they didn't admire; namely those who don't work or produce.

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