Editor,
Those instituting radical change must have outsiders to demonize: called “enemies of the people” by Robespierre during the French Revolution, “kulaks” by the Soviets, and “sufan“ by the Communist Chinese. Today they are called the “1 percent” by Occupy Wall Street.
We’re told the 1 percent hold too large a portion of national income. In reality, a number are from the Trial Lawyers Bar and Hollywood, notable supporters of the ‘little people.” Many are business owners; others have inherited wealth; some are nefarious bankers, financiers and Wall Street denizens. The 1 percent is quite a diverse group of people with widely disparate incomes.
As I see it, the 1 percent is made up of fellow Americans, only richer. Many contribute greatly to society. Haven’t the Rockefellers, the Mellons, the Gettys, the Norton Simons been sufficiently philanthropic? The U.S. tax system is highly progressive: The top 1 percent make 21 percent of all income earned in the U.S., but pay 38 percent of all federal personal taxes. Seems like a very respectable amount in a country where 45 percent pay no federal personal taxes.
And what Solomonic figure will establish the 1 percent’s “fair share” of taxes and determine when equality is achieved? It seems like it’s been tried in the Soviet Union, Communist China, Zimbabwe, Burma, Cuba and Cambodia. It ends in repression and terror — gulags, laogias, killing fields.
Say you, it takes a while to get Communism right — results have been much better in Socialist Europe. Is that why Greece and Italy are de facto bankrupt? They and other European countries are near catastrophic failure — a failure not just monetary, but, as accompanied by rioting, increasingly destructive and deadly. This income equality thing is not for sissies.
But what of those who loudly proclaim “We are the 99 percent?”
Resentments have so blinded them they cannot see their birthright.
They are “We the People of the United States,” individuals “created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights … Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
This equality is glorious, unencumbered and inviolable, providing the freedom and opportunity to realize one’s potential. It is all the equality there need be, and all, in a real world, that there can be.
Donald Gluck
President of the UNM Conservative Republicans
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