Who are the wealth creators? (X-posted in Editorials & other articles.)

[Earth Bound Misfit]

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=478641&mesg_id=478641

The right says the answer is rich people, not workers -- who are wealth destroyers
By Michael Lind

Sep. 07, 2009

Today is Labor Day, when we celebrate the wealth destroyers – at least if the libertarian right is to be believed.

According to many free-market conservatives, economic growth is almost exclusively the result of investment decisions by a small number of rich individuals – the "wealth creators." The wealth creators, according to the conservative press, are constantly being threatened from above by government, which seeks to destroy wealth by taxation, and from below by workers, particularly those organized into unions, who threaten to destroy wealth by insisting that capitalists share a decent amount of their profits with employees. The entire basis of conservative "trickle-down" economics is the idea that the economy will grow faster if the supposed wealth creators keep more of the profits of private enterprise, with less going to taxes and worker compensation.

If you believe this theory, then Labor Day should be a cause for national mourning. We should all pause to mourn the loss of capital that might have gone to a fifth or a sixth mansion or a private jet, but instead was conscripted against its will to pay for a public school or higher wages in a factory.

We should weep for the capital that might have given its life for high-end caterers but instead was forced by government to be spent on public hospital nurses. And we should grieve for the dollars that were wasted on public police protection, when they might have gone instead to private security guards in a gated community.

But maybe instead of mourning we should celebrate. Maybe Labor Day should be replaced by a new holiday to celebrate the tiny number of brilliant investors who, more or less single-handedly, are responsible for long-term economic progress. We should abolish Labor Day and replace it with Capital Day – a festive time when we, the majority of parasitic wealth destroyers whose income comes from wages rather than investments, can give our collective thanks to the small number of people who have most of the money.

snip

Human beings labored for themselves for tens of thousands of years before the appearance of rentier elites like warlords, landlords and investors. Those groups, whether benevolent or parasitic, can exist only in a highly specialized society in which wealth creation is a society-wide enterprise, including peasants as well as knights, renters as well as landlords, and workers as well as capitalists.

How did we get from Lincoln, for whom labor was prior to capital, to the Investor's Business Daily writer for whom the "wealth creators" are the richest 5 percent of society? The answer, I think, is the machine. The dependence of the Southern slave owner on slaves was pretty obvious. But as machine production becomes more important in industry and agriculture, labor becomes only one factor of production along with technology. Technological progress means that fewer and fewer workers are needed to operate ever more productive machines.

The alternative theory is that the true creator of wealth is, ultimately, the commonwealth – not only the political community, but the civilization that it shares with other nations. No technical invention or business innovation is a creation of something from nothing. All depend on the intellectual capital that the human race has accumulated since the Paleolithic period. The argument for property rights then becomes a utilitarian one – which set of property rights will spur individuals and groups and whole societies to engage in useful innovation? (Not all innovation is necessarily useful, as we have seen in the case of financial innovation.)

The commonwealth theory defines wealth broadly, as everything that conduces to the well-being of a community. Material production is only one of many activities that enrich a society. Public goods like safety and utilities and infrastructure and parks are part of the wealth that we share in common. So are many private goods that sometimes are best provided by the public, like public education and inexpensive healthcare.

By all means, then, let us celebrate virtuous capital owners and visionary investors as "wealth creators" on Labor Day. And let us celebrate as well as the other creators of private wealth, on the assembly line and in the office cubicle and in the janitorial closet, and the creators of public wealth in the form of roads and subways and parks, and the police officers and soldiers without whom a high level of public and private wealth could neither be created nor preserved. There are criminals and parasites among all classes of society, but most of us are wealth creators, and we deserve to be recognized as such.

More @ link: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/09/07/labor_day/index.html?source=rss&aim=/opinion/feature

[PlzSTFU]

1. re:

Well stated, thanks for sharing

[Earth Bound Misfit]

2. Curious screen name.

Welcome to DU.:)