Audacity Without Hope

I grew up the son of a "rich" man. My father, with his two brothers, built the plastics manufacturing company started by their father into a thriving enterprise, employing hundreds of people through 50 years in their Kenilworth, NJ location. These men -- simple, God-fearing, family men -- poured their collective guts into that business, "richly" deserving of every penny it provided to them. They were wealth creators -- for themselves, for their employees, for their suppliers, for their customers -- in the classic American tradition.

It distresses me that a hack Chicago politician -- Senator Obama, stand up, please? -- wholly ignorant of the world of business and commerce, decrees that similar successful business owners throughout the country must, in essence, hand over a higher portion of their hard-earned compensation to the government in the guise of a "middle class" tax cut. Then again, he represents the far loony fringe of a party that, I'm certain, pines for the good old days of 90% marginal tax rates that existed before JFK began the rollback that Reagan continued.

Here's a thought, Senator: If you want the vast middle class to do better, then unleash the owners/entreprenueurs like my father by cutting their taxes, thereby incenting them to take risks, to start and grow businesses that employ the middle class folks you choose to target through redistributive transfer payments. There are men and women out there who have amassed great wealth, and others who will do so if given the incentive, via more traditional means than trading in arcane financial instruments and managing hedge funds. "Working families" making less than $250,000 will fare a helluva lot better when "working families" making much more than that are not punished for doing so.

My dad sold his share of the business some years back, and at age 92 is still going strong. He may not be directly affected by an Obama redistribution revolution, but I'm sure he feels for his fellow business owners whose blood, sweat, and tears may soon yield far fewer rewards than deserved. An unhealthy, stagnant economy is the only result from such foolish policy.