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Jewish World Review Oct 11, 2011 / 13Tishrei, 5772 I live better than Rockefeller --- and do so with thanks, not resentment. Some want that to stop By Jack Kelly
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple Inc, died Oct. 5, evidently of cancer. He was 56.
Mr. Jobs was one of those rich guys of whom President Barack Obama disapproves...when he's not attending $35,000 a plate fund-raisers, or vacationing in their homes. Mr. Jobs made a fortune Forbes magazine estimated at $5.4 billion.
Mr. Jobs wasn't always rich. He dropped out college because his working class parents couldn't afford the tuition. He and high school buddy Steve Wozniak founded Apple in the garage of his parents' home in Cupertino, California.
That was in 1976. Apple Inc. today is worth about $340 billion, and has more than 46,000 employees.
My wife and I have contributed to Mr. Jobs' wealth. We both have Apple Mac laptop computers and iPhones, and Pam has an iPad. We don't begrudge Mr. Jobs the profit he made when we bought those products. They've enriched our lives.
I'm just a middle class American, getting squeezed by stagnant wages and rising prices for food and gasoline. I worry a little about being able to pay the bills each month, a lot about whether I'll ever have enough money to retire. It's easy to forget that I, arguably, live better than did John D. Rockefeller (1839-1937).
I don't have mansions or servants. But my home has indoor plumbing, central heat and air conditioning. I have a color television (and cable), a microwave oven, a computer and a cell phone. I eat fresh fruit and vegetables year round. My car is better than any Mr. Rockefeller ever owned, and my health care is superior. I have to fly coach when I visit my daughter in Denver. But I can make in a few hours a trip that would have taken Mr. Rockefeller days on the train.
I've worked hard all my life. But most of what I have I owe to the genius of others.
Until about 200 years ago, all but a handful of people in every society that's ever existed lived at or barely above a subsistence level.
Then came the Industrial Revolution. Within a few decades, ordinary people in Britain and America were living better than royalty had in the millenia preceding.
The Industrial Revolution happened because the geniuses who invented the steam engine, the railroad, the mechanical reaper, interchangeable parts, the telegraph and telephone and so much more were free to pursue their ideas for the betterment of mankind.
And to line their own pockets too. Most successful innovators became rich.
I've never resented the successful for enjoying the fruits of their labors. Democrats do. The top one percent of earners pay nearly 40 percent of the federal income tax. The top one tenth of one percent pays about 20 percent. But "the rich" still don't pay their "fair share," Democrats say. They're "greedy" if they don't want to pay more.
"At a certain point, you've made enough money," President Barack Obama said.
The truly greedy, it seems to me, are those who think they've a right to live well at the expense of others.
The vacations Michelle Obama has taken so far this year have cost taxpayers $10 million, calculated the National Enquirer in August.
Most of that is for transportation and Secret Service protection. But the Obamas have been remarkably extravagant. Michelle and daughters Sasha and Malia took a separate jet to Martha's Vineyard in August, even though they arrived within four hours of the president. A separate Air Force jet was sent for the presidential dog, Bo, when the Obamas vacationed in Maine last year.
In the interest of "fairness," Democrats want to redistribute wealth from the people who've earned it to people they think will vote for them. Democrats forget that before wealth can be redistributed, it must be created. If producers are demonized, and too many obstacles are thrown in their path, less of it will be.
"Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man," wrote science fiction writer Robert Heinlein. "Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded -- here and there, now and then -- are all the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.
This is known as bad luck."
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JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration.
© 2011, Jack Kelly |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
