From CNS News.
Excerpt:
It turns out that the top 10 CEOs have an average salary of $43 million, which pales in comparison with America’s top 10 celebrities, who earn an average salary of $100 million.
When you recognize that celebrities earn salaries that are some multiples of CEO salaries, you have to ask: Why is it that rich CEOs are demonized and not celebrities? A clue might be found if you asked: Who’s doing the demonizing?
It turns out that the demonizing is led by politicians and leftists with the help of the news media, and like sheep, the public often goes along. Why demonize CEOs? My colleague Dr. Thomas Sowell explained it in his brand-new book, “The Thomas Sowell Reader.” One of his readings, titled “Ivan and Boris – and Us,” starts off with a fable of two poor Russian peasants.
Ivan finds a magic lamp and rubs it, and the jinni grants him one wish. As it turns out, Boris has a goat, but Ivan doesn’t. Ivan’s wish is for Boris’ goat to die. That vision reflects the feelings of too many Americans. If all CEOs worked for nothing, it would mean absolutely little or nothing to the average American’s bottom line.
For politicians, it’s another story: Demonize people whose power you want to usurp. That’s the typical way totalitarians gain power. They give the masses someone to hate. In 18th-century France, it was Maximilien Robespierre’s promoting hatred of the aristocracy that was the key to his acquiring more dictatorial power than the aristocracy had ever had.
In the 20th century, the communists gained power by promoting public hatred of the czars and capitalists. In Germany, Adolf Hitler gained power by promoting hatred of Jews and Bolsheviks. In each case, the power gained led to greater misery and bloodshed than anything the old regime could have done.
Let me be clear: I’m not equating America’s liberals with Robespierre, Josef Stalin and Hitler. I am saying that promoting jealousy, fear and hate is an effective strategy for politicians and their liberal followers to control and micromanage businesses.
Tom sent me this article that shows that raising taxes on the wealthy doesn’t even produce more revenue.
Excerpt:
All this nostalgia about the good old days of 70% tax rates makes it sound as though only the highest incomes would face higher tax rates. In reality, there were a dozen tax rates between 48% and 70% during the 1970s… the individual income tax actually brought in less revenue when the highest tax rate was 70% to 91% than it did when the highest tax rate was 28%.
[…]President John F. Kennedy’s across-the-board tax cuts reduced the lowest and highest tax rates to 14% and 70% respectively after 1964, yet revenues (after excluding the 5%-10% surtaxes of 1969-70) rose to 8% of GDP. President Reagan’s across-the-board tax cuts further reduced the lowest and highest tax rates to 11% and 50%, yet revenues rose again to 8.3% of GDP. The 1986 tax reform slashed the top tax rate to 28%, yet revenues dipped trivially to 8.1% of GDP.
Why would a Christian care how much money other people have at all? If you see someone who is poor, help them. If you see someone who needs a gift, give them a gift. The Bible teaches individual charity – you choose who to give your money to and how much to give, after you’ve paid your taxes to Caesar. I think it’s time that we took the Bible seriously on money… there are an awful lot of people sinning by breaking people into groups based on how much money they have – or what the color of their skin is. You do the best you can with what you can earn, and stop being concerned about taking money from people who have more than you do. The purpose of life is not to make everyone happy by making the secular government allocate everyone an equal amount of stuff – how unBiblical.
WINTERY KNIGHT 