October 3, 2010
By Herman Cain
President Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress believe it
is practically immoral to allow people who have made a lot of money to
decide how they want to spend it. It is equally immoral for some people
to think that they are entitled to other people’s money through the
force of the government.
Class warfare has been a winning tactic for Democrats for a long
time, but a lot of voters are waking up to the false promise of that old
tired song. Some people are realizing that they might be “rich” one
day. They are asking the question that, if they work their anchovies off
to make some real money, then why should the government take it and
redistribute it to those who did not want to take risks and work 24/7
for themselves and their families?
Studies have shown for decades that a majority of people who start
out in the lowest economic quintile (20 percent) will advance at least
two quintiles higher over time with some of them making it all the way
to the top quintile. My dad was one on those achievers.
My dad walked off his father’s small dirt farm with just the clothes
on his back to pursue his American dreams. His only equity was sweat
equity! At one point in his life he worked three jobs to try to improve
his economic situation. He was a barber, janitor and chauffeur all at
the same time.
When my dad died at the age of 56 in 1982, his net worth was
$982,000. He started with nothing! We used the capital gains on his
estate to take care of my mom who had multiple sclerosis until she died
24 years later. After mom passed, I wrote an estate tax payment to the
government for $1.3 million dollars, since we had invested wisely and
Dad’s estate had grown in value.
So that’s one reason I am sick and tired of people whining about what
the rich ought to pay! The Declaration of Independence says “the
pursuit of happiness”. It does not say anything about a guarantee or a
Department of Happy.
I am also sick of the lie press secretary Robert Gibbs and other
Democrats are claiming that by not taxing those families making over
$250,000 a year, we will add $700 billion to the deficit. It’s a lie
because it is based on static analysis, which is the method bureaucrats
use when they are trying to dupe the taxpayers into another tax
increase. Show me the analysis!
And another thing! For the president to tell people at one of his
staged backyard town hall meetings that he needed to raise taxes on
those families to help reduce the deficit and the national debt is
simply disingenuous. The American people have been screaming for over a
year for the government to stop the spending! But he and his Democrats
in Congress have been deaf to the public.
The president and the Democrats have no positive accomplishments to
boast about leading up to the 2010 congressional elections. So they play
the race card, the class warfare card and politics of personal
attacks.
Most people who are able to generate a modest amount of wealth
usually donate a large portion of their wealth to charitable and
community-based organizations. That’s where it does the most good
because it is closest to where the need is based. Going through the
mechanism of government redistribution is inefficient and unfair.
Two thirds of those “evil rich” people making over $250,000 a year
are small businesses that employ nearly two-thirds of the workers in
America. A caller reminded me last week that if those businesses have to
pay more in taxes, some of their workers might lose their jobs.
Abraham Lincoln said, “You don’t help the poor by hurting the rich.”
This administration is determined to hurt the rich and make more people
poor.
