Occupy Wall Street and Patrick the Puddinghead

My teeth are starting to itch; there must be the usual bunch of idiots around.  Yup, there they are, being given featured space on television quasi-news.  The, “
Occupy Wall Street
” losers are running around trying to make their minimally useful lives more relevant by protesting en masse.  Moveon.org is encouraging college students to boycott classes and join the disruption.  Yup, ignorance is a sure cure for everything!  To that point, CNN tried to interview someone named Patrick.  He was supposed to be a sympathetic character because he had recently graduated from college and couldn’t fine a job.  While this fool mumbled and bumbled his way through several incoherent sentences, I couldn’t help thinking, “Son, I know why you can’t find a job!”  I have no idea what school he went to or what degree he got, but I am pretty sure NASA is not missing a rocket scientist. 

            One comment that did make it out of Patrick’s much confused mouth was, “One percent of the population controls 40% of the wealth!”  To which I respond, “…and your point is?”   If someone can earn ten times as much money as I can and does it legally I have no problem with that.  They have earned it.  Does Patrick the Puddinghead understand that?  You deserve what you E-A-R-N!  If I were the type of person who yells (which, thankfully, I am not) I would be using my outdoor voice right now.   When did Patrick Puddinghead get the idea that very rich people don’t deserve to be very rich?  If you do a job that a million people can do you may only get $1 for it.  If you do a job that only one in a million can do, you deserve $1,000,000.   Why doesn’t Patrick Puddinghead know that?  

            Now there are some of you out there who are probably thinking one of three things.  First, what about the rich people who are making there money at the expense of others?  Well, you did notice that I qualified my support for the rich with the caveat, “and does it legally” didn’t you?  If someone is not making their money legally, or isn’t obeying regulations, or is subject to civil litigation, then go after them.  We are supposed to be a nation of laws, use them. 

Second, some of you might be thinking about all of that inherited wealth.  Let me ask you this; is your money yours to do with as you wish?  If it is, then you get to give it away or keep.  You get to buy and sell, share with charity, horde it like a miser or throw it to the winds.  It is your money.  That means that you also get to bequeath it to your heirs.  Your parents get to give you their accumulated wealth, and you get to give it to your children—or anything else you want.  The right to bequeath is one of the definitions of a free market economy.  Feel free to hate bonus babies if you want, but it just makes you look petty.  Personally, I’m hoping to leave my kids a bundle.  Why?  Because I have earned the right!

Finally, some of you are wondering, do some people really deserve more?  Just because they are smarter, or better trained, or more talented, or even just luckier than I am?  Do people who have superior skills really deserve superior reward?  Yes, they do.  If you don’t believe that you are a communist, or a socialist, or a Patrick Puddinghead. 

Don’t be a pudding head, and keep the faith.

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