We Can't Legislate All Our Problems Away

I just read an article in the Washington Post that implied that all the financial problems of the shrinking middle class would be solved if Congress would simply require all employers to pay overtime to all workers below a certain income level, based proportionally on the economic statistics of what our parents received, some forty years ago. That, combined with the demanded raise of the minimum wage to $15.00 per hour would solve all the financial problems of the middle class, and everything would be "hunky-dory", or whatever.

The article was calling for "us" to "stick it to the 1%" of the population that is considered to be obscenely rich, and therefore the economic enemies of everybody else. The writer is apparently a true, card-carrying socialist who believes that economics is merely a matter of divvying up the "money pie" more fairly between the "haves", and the "have nots". These people don't consider that money is created by thrift, and hard work, combined with the risks involved in determining which businesses can produce valued products and services, most efficiently, considering the afore mentioned principles. We need to stop trying to take money away from the rich, through Socialist legislation, and provide the Free Market opportunities for the rich to give it away themselves. They will either waste it upon their profligate life-styles, or they will invest it if they are not ready to spend it, either wisely, which will create jobs for others to earn better wages, or unwisely, in which case their money will simply change ownership, until it winds up in the hands of someone who will invest it wisely. This is how God "redistributes" the wealth in a truly free economy, and it seems that Socialists are so busy being jealous of the "filthy rich" that they want the Legislature to pre-empt God, and take their money away from them now, giving greedy politicians, and lobbyists the opportunity to skim off surplus graft in the process. In doing so, we only create another level of wasteful spenders, making it that much longer for the money to work it's way through the economy till it winds up in the hands of wise investors. That's how we end up with economic depressions, and recessions, which cause the middle class workers to demand more legislation to spread the economic "pie" a bit more "fairly", which keeps the cycle spinning, endlessly. If we will simply get Government out of the way, then economic pressures will cause incomes to even out naturally, as (what Adam Smith referred to the "invisible hand of God") directs money to flow to the most efficient producers.

And don't worry about the obscenely wealthy 1%. None of them have ever figured a way to take it with them, when they die, though some, pathetically, have tried, like the Egyptian Pharoahs, and the proverbial heiress, whose will demanded that she was to be buried inside her beloved Rolls Royce. God will repay them for their lifestyles, whether in Heaven, or hell, and their bank accounts will not influence Him, like it may some corrupt legislators.