Among the issues most commonly discussed are individuality, the rights of the individual, the limits of legitimate government, morality, history, economics, government policy, science, business, education, health care, energy, and man-made global warming evaluations. My posts are aimed at intelligent and rational individuals, whose comments are very welcome.

"No matter how vast your knowledge or how modest, it is your own mind that has to acquire it." Ayn Rand

"Observe that the 'haves' are those who have freedom, and that it is freedom that the 'have-nots' have not." Ayn Rand

"The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not 'selflessness' or 'sacrifice', but integrity." Ayn Rand

For "a human being, the question 'to be or not to be,' is the question 'to think or not to think.'" Ayn Rand

20 October 2011

What Percent are You?

The Occupy Wall Street crowd claims to stand with the 99% against the 1%.  A conservative news service points out that the 1% earn more than $506,000 a year.  But when it comes to figuring out legitimate government policy, we are not characterized sufficiently by our income.  In fact, our income ought to be as irrelevant as race, religion, sex, or sexuality in government policy.  Making it as important as it is commonly made is highly materialistic.  Note that it is the socialist left that makes the most of income and in that shows its lack of spirituality and its extreme materialism.

Is it not odd that if a man takes the risks of owning his own company and works 70 hours a week and therefor someday may make a higher income than a man who takes a nice, safe 40 hour a week job as an employee and who watches TV for 30 hours a week, the hardworking businessman is taxed more?  The businessman is required to be an unpaid tax collector, is held responsible for all of his employee's safety, is forced to pay for the unemployment of employees whether they ever worked for his company or not, and is supposed to see to it that his company complies with more than 200,000 pages of often-conflicting regulations or suffer crippling fines.  The businessman may very well have 45 hours of his life each week taken by force from him for government purposes.  The employee is more likely to have only 6 or 8 hours of his life claimed by government each week.  These hours taken by force are the equivalent of slavery.

By what right does government enslave one man for many more hours a week than another?  Worse yet, the government really only does it for the same reason that Willy Sutton robbed banks.  That is where the money is.  It just is not easy for the government to figure out how to take anything it wants out of the 30 hours a week our hypothetical employee is watching TV.  The government simply wants to steal and it is easy to steal from the hardworking businessman, whether it is his mandated service to the government collecting taxes, complying with regulation, or as safety inspector and provider, or the money he earned with his time.  The government is clearly just Willy Sutton.

It is absurd that people spend so much time characterizing themselves in terms of their income.  Legitimate government has the sole purpose of protecting the equal, sovereign individual rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of personal happiness.  As far as government policy is concerned there are only two numbers that characterize each of us.  They are 1 and 0.0000000032.  You do know what the later number is, do you not?


3 comments:

Unknown said...

Another interesting way to find your number is here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-15391515

juandos said...

Well isn't this whole whine about the supposed '99%' part and parcel of the strawman argument of income inequality?

Charles R. Anderson, Ph.D. said...

Saying it is about income inequality may be a nice way of saying it is about envy. Socialists have complained about income inequality and used envy to rally people to the cause of collectivism for 200 years, while ignoring the increased wealth of almost every American brought on by Capitalism throughout that time. The Occupiers main complaint seems to be that the government should give them more goodies. In their dreams there is no unsustainable limit beyond which the welfare state cannot go. The reality, recognized largely by the Tea Party movement, that we have already gone far beyond the limits of sustainability is lost on them. Like the Greeks and the Spaniards, they will have to drive the government to actual collapse before even a few of them are able to understand this.