When you hear about Big Business, it's amazing how so many people group it along with the likes of skinheads or terrorists. If you watch enough television or movies, more often than not, the bad guy ends up being some crooked, avaricious businessman from Wall Street. Although the scandals behind Enron or Bernie Madoff are morally reprehensible, they make up a considerable minority of what goes on in the business world.
But if that's the case, why do so many Americans love vilifying them? Because a seemingly inefficient amount of money leads to something else green filling in the void--envy. People who are not satisfied with their material wealth and have lower self-esteem are bound to resent those who are more successful, intelligent, or financially well-off.
A huge majority of millionaires in this country did not come from "old money." They are self-made and had to work hard to earn it. If you don't like it, you can either improve your education, learn new skills to make yourself more marketable so you can climb up the corporate ladder, or you can invent something really useful like Bill Gates did and make a huge amount of cash. But if you prefer receiving a handout rather than develop a hard work ethic motivated by the desire to succeed, shut up and stop whining because it's not going to come to you on a silver platter!
Not only should Americans not be resentful towards Big Business, they should be thankful. Why? Because Big Business translates into a whole lot of employment. According to the Small Business Administration, a small business is defined as a firm with fewer than five hundred employees. Let's just say that the definition hardly lines up with the notion of a mom-and-pop shop. This definition renders 99.7% as small businesses. But let's work with the definition for a moment. That remaining "evil" 0.3% that we like to call Big Business accounts for roughly a half of the country's employment.
Here's some basic economics: rich people have capital, which means that rich people can expand business. Expanding business translates into more employment. More employment translates into economic growth. As former Texas senator Phil Gramm put it, "No one ever got a job from a poor man."
For anyone who has picked up an economics textbook, this would be considered sound economics, but it's something you'll never hear from Obama, Pelosi, the Democrats, or just about anybody on the Left for that matter. The Left likes throwing lavishing welfare programs at the poor to make the poor feel loved and helped. But it really doesn't help the poor. It becomes very difficult to come out of poverty when a dependency on welfare or any other government-based entitlement program is in play. You know what kind of "support" is best for financial stability as well as one's self-worth? It's not a government check--it's a job. More jobs means less unemployment, which means less poverty. Therefore, if we truly want to help alleviate poverty, let's stop punishing the largest provider of employment in America. It shouldn't take a genius to figure out that economic freedom leads to economic growth and diminution in poverty. So rather than come out with bloated, highly inefficient stimulus packages or rather than punishing Big Business by not extending the Bush-era tax breaks, it might behoove Obama and the Democrats to just stay out of the way for once.
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