Ramblings on the Rich

Here's an example of the kind of argument people are using when they don't want taxes raised on the rich: if a rich "job creator" works harder than some clown that kicked their feet up and drank Thunderbird and played World of Warcraft all day, they'd probably feel pissed if someone tried to make them pay more taxes.

I agree. If you work hard, you should keep your earnings. If you're lazy, fuck yourself.

But what's missing here is many of these rich job creators don't really work any harder than the people they employ, they were just more willing to take an up front risk and create something out of nothing (or something out of a ton of ingerited wealth). Startign a company takes balls and the number of them that fail prove it's not easy.

Basically when we reward these kinds of people, we're rewarding cocky self assurance and risky behavior. I'm down with both of those things. It's what made that first fish waddle onto land and say "Check this shit out boys!" It's what makes evolution possible (if you don't believe in evolution, you should be barred by law from using it to explain economic theories).

If there's a problem with the current system, I'd say that it's we're too willing too bail out these risk takers and too unwilling to help everyday folks who've just had a run of bad luck. In reality, most of us are not job creators and most of us are not lazy. We're sort of stuck in the middle.

Too big to fail seems to create too small to thrive. The big guys, insured from collapse by the rest of us, make it hard for the little guy to grow.