Commentary’s John Steele Gordon on “Liberal Myths About the Middle Class and the Wealthy:”
Did Steve Jobs make me poorer when I laid out $600 for an iPad the other day? Of course not. I valued the iPad more than the $600 or I wouldn’t have bought it. So I got richer and so did Steve Jobs’s estate. (And now, if a 19th century technology, electricity, ever comes back on after a freak October snowstorm, I might actually get to use it.)
Since money-grubbing businessmen are, in Bill Keller’s and the rest of the left’s opinion, beneath contempt, let’s look at another great fortune. Paul McCartney was born poor. Today he is one of the richest men in Britain. Who did he impoverish in the course of getting so rich? No one, of course. His music has greatly enriched the world and the lives of all its inhabitants.
Taxing away great fortunes or preventing their accumulation is what makes the world poorer. It transfers wealth from those who created it to those who will pay off their political allies with it. It is often dreams of great wealth that makes people work so hard to come up with the next big idea.
Why would anyone want to take wealth away from Steve Jobs and give it to the people who ran Solyndra? Liberals, that’s who.
Exit question: when will we stop calling them liberal?
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