The Left is tenacious. Fortunately for the United States, their weapons are few and largely worn out:
America’s richest 10% now hold 60% of the nation’s wealth.
The bottom half of America? It holds just 6%.
Wealth inequality is eating this country alive. pic.twitter.com/7apm6IrOAR
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) November 20, 2024
Robert Reich would like you to believe that that graph means what he says it means. It does not. Yes, wealthy people have more “wealth” than un-wealthy people. But they don’t kindle their fireplaces with $1000 bills. Their “wealth” is largely tangible: capital assets that are being used to produce – drum roll, Maestro – more goods and services, which will make it possible for the rest of us to have more wealth.
What the graph does not indicate is that those wealthy people own most of the wealth in the country. The physical assets of middle and working-class Americans are massive: so many trillions of dollars in market value that they cannot be estimated to a useful degree of precision. And, like the capital mentioned above, they’re in use: our homes, our cars, our other movable property, and our savings.
But the point of Reich’s attempted deception is to inspire class warfare. Under no imaginable scenario would the physical assets of the wealthy somehow be distributed among the rest of us. Rather, Reich wants those assets to be made the property of the federal government, to be managed according to his priorities rather than those of their owners. That’s the socialist goal: the abolition of property rights in capital assets. Karl Marx and his fellow travelers called it “ownership of the means of production by the workers,” but the true owner is the State – and over the State, you and I would have no influence whatsoever.
Happily, the typical American, whatever his gripes, hardly spares a thought for the wealthy from day to day. He has to be prodded into thinking of them – and for Reich and his ilk, that means inspiring class-based envy, the fuel of socialist revolutions.
The moral of the story is simple: Ignore the would-be inciters of hatred. Reich is one such. If you’re going to listen to a dwarf, prefer Peter Dinklage. He was really good in Threshold and even better in A Game of Thrones.
2 comments
Absolutely right. This kind of thing isn’t simply expressing a different point of view, it is nothing more than pushing a Marxist socialist agenda with the intent of destroying our republic and replacing it with communism. They won’t say that part out loud just as a child sexual predator doesn’t profess their intent when they groom a child either. But that is what it is, they are grooming the ignorant to vote against their best interests so that they can seize power. This never ends well. Reich is a socialist groomer.
I can only point to the esteemed Bill Whittle’s masterpiece on this topic (easily found on Youtube and elsewhere) “Eat The Rich” to explain the ultimate (even if not entirely intended) outcome of such class rhetoric. (It’s over a decade old, and still essentially relevant, not easy with the rapidly changing conditions.)