Economic Ignorance On Full Display

In 2009, my California cousin was here in Atlanta for the filming of the Sandra Bullock movie, “The Blind Side.” Before retiring a few years ago, he traveled the world working long hours as a set worker on many of Hollywood’s biggest blockbuster films.

While he was here, he complained bitterly about unequal pay in the motion picture industry, citing as an example the $17 million he said Reece Witherspoon was paid for starring in a movie he worked on:

“I put in just as many hours as she did, yet she got $17 million!”

To put it in medical terms, my cousin’s anguish was caused by an acute mental disorder known as stage 4 economic ignorance.

As I patiently explained to him, Reece Witherspoon was paid $17 million because she is one of the few franchise stars in Hollywood whose name on the marquee is guaranteed to attract millions of ticket-buyers, whereas his name wouldn’t draw flies. Instead of bellyaching about people like her, my cousin should drop to his knees and thank God for Hollywood’s highly-paid superstars. Without them, he’d have had no job.

Widespread economic ignorance is why so many of otherwise intelligent Americans have been seduced by the scourge of socialism. Below is another article with economic information people of all political persuasions should know.

What Millennials don’t get about America’s economic pie

Fed a steady diet of economic lies by anti-capitalists in our society, the Millennial generation has been tricked into believing that the wealthy get rich only by stealing an oversized slice of America’s economic pie. By taking more than their fair share, the narrative goes, greedy corporate CEOs leave little but crumbs for everyone else. Such fallacious thinking is referred to as the zero sum theory of economics, the idea that there’s only one finite-sized pie to go around, and that one person taking a large slice means someone else will go hungry.

In truth, America does not have a finite economic pie. Rather, it has a virtually unlimited supply of ever-evolving economic pies of varying sizes waiting to be made by enterprising people of every race and every income group.

The biggest such pies are made by high-profile capitalists like Warren Buffet, a Democrat, and Charles Koch, a Republican, both of whom generously share their self-created economic pies not only with a myriad of charitable organizations, but also with hundreds of thousands of well-paid employees who eagerly work for their thriving corporate empires.

Millions of other economic pies are made by less famous job creators, those whose small businesses provide more than 80% of America’s private sector employment. Still more economic pies are made by the 160 million people who comprise the backbone of our economy, men and women who earn a slice of their country’s widespread prosperity simply by getting up and going to work so they can provide for themselves and their family by working hard and learning to live within their means.

Unfortunately, there will always be some who habitually make bad decisions, financial or otherwise. Frustrated that self-created problems have kept them from participating in the American dream, they bitterly complain that someone else made off with their share of the pie. With nothing but crumbs on their plates, these economically ignorant people are prime targets of the party whose election success depends upon inciting class hatred, the means of gaining political power outlined in an 1848 manuscript titled The Communist Manifesto.

A new poll commissioned by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation found that 70% of Millennials are likely to vote for a socialist candidate in 2020. Since socialism-loving Millennials are so obsessed with wealth disparity, here are a few questions for them:

• If wealth disparity is a bad thing, can aggrieved Millennials explain why so many obscenely rich Democrats—Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Oprah, Al Gore, the Clintons, the Obamas, et al—selfishly cling to the lion’s share of their enviable fortunes, rather than giving away, say, 80% of what they have to the poor?
• Can Millennials explain how corporate CEOs are any more to blame for wealth disparity than the obscenely rich Democrats named above?
• Can they explain how society is hurt when wealthy job creators like Warren Buffet and Charles Koch use their accumulated capital to create even more good-paying jobs?

If Millennials troubled by wealth inequality reflect on those questions, they will (1) stop blaming others and get to work on a plan for earning a share of their country’s bountiful prosperity, and (2) realize that the party telling them that socialism will make their lives better is playing them for fools.

Socialism is doomed to fail wherever it is tried, because it is in eternal mortal conflict with the basic human instinct that those who work harder, educate themselves, employ their ingenuity and risk their capital have an inborn expectation to do significantly better than those who don’t. That is an immutable human trait that will never change.

©John Edison. All rights reserved.

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