Whining About Wealth

Am I the only one getting tired of the economically-ignorant whining about how the top ____% own a large (i.e., “unfair) portion of the “wealth” in the United States? What “wealth” are the whiners talking about? They erroneously  believe that the wealth is some collective public pie that these “greedy” top ____% have unfairly expropriated from the rest of us. It isn’t. Each person in the top ___% has his or her own wealth, i.e., property, that they (except for the Banksters) acquired¹ through voluntarily exchanging a product or service with other people (called customers). They have exponentially more wealth than most people because the particular product or service that they offered was desired by exponentially more people than the particular product or service offered by the vast majority of people.² (The owner of a store that sells computers may make a very nice profit, but he will never have the profit that Bill Gates makes from Microsoft. A neurosurgeon may make a very handsome income, but he’s certainly not going to make the income that a Tiger Woods or Brad Pitt makes.)

And what’s with the whining about “the difference (ratio) between what a CEO makes and what a worker makes in the U.S. is wider than in any other country in the world”? So? Big deal! If you whiners are so concerned, then tell me what you, in your infinite economic “wisdom,” deem to be the “proper” ratio? WARNING: Whatever arbitrary SUBJECTIVE ratio you give, I’m going to respond with a different arbitrary SUBJECTIVE ratio. (And when you get through telling me what the “proper” ratio should be, please tell me what the “acceptable” profit percentage should be for a corporation, what the minimum wage should be for an employee, what the maximum CEO salary should be, what the…)
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¹I’m well aware that there are certain people who acquired their wealth through inheritance. Good for them.
²I’m well aware of government patents/licensing/copyrights/regulations etc. that prevent free market competition; but unless the government FORCED us to buy Microsoft software (like it forced us to buy seat belts for cars), Gates made his fortune because consumers preferred his products to others.

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8:40 pm on October 7, 2011