Over the past few years I have heard more and more about how people are unhappy with the economic situation in our country. Since the stock market crash of 08 the issue has been raised even more about how there is a huge divide between our nation’s richest citizens and our most poor. I have always thought this is a load of crap because I believe that capitalism is the greatest invention in the history of the world. I am of the opinion that capitalism in the United States creates competition and gives motivation to our citizens to constantly come up with new ideas and inventions that make our country, as well as the world, a better place. Yet, for some reason, there are still critics out there who want to "spread the wealth around". These critics either believe that a.)wealth should be spread around between every citizen no matter how hard they work (also called socialism) or b.)the more popular choice, that anyone making a certain amount of money (over $250,000 in our current taxation system) should pay a much higher tax rate than those making less. The latter implies that our government is better equipped to spend one's money than the so called "rich" people. In my opinion, this is a bunch of malarkey. I'll save my "how the government wastes our money" speech for another time, but I'll just say that I think our government wastes a RIDICULOUS amount of money on programs that either don't work or don't help the people they were put in place to support. If we were to all live in a utopic society, things might be different. Maybe there would be no poor people, no people in need, and no one who is disabled and in need of government support, however we do not live in such a society. I believe that the vast majority of people who believe in these higher taxes and that spreading around the wealth is for the good of the country seem to have a distorted view that the "rich" are evil people out there to squash the little guy. Whether this outlook comes from jealousy or somewhere else, I am not in the position to comment. I do know that while there is a large gap between the top 1% and the bottom 5% of our nation's wealth, this is to be expected in a society where the people are free to either work their asses off or sit around and do nothing.
This brings me to my main point of writing this: today, while I was looking up Mark Zuckerberg on Wikipedia, I came across something called The Giving Pledge. The Giving Pledge is a group, started by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett (The two richest people in the United States) that pledged to give half of their wealth away over time. Since it’s list was made public in 2010, 57 of our countries billionaires have joined and pledged to give away half of their wealth, totaling over $150 BILLION dollars. For some reason, this unprecedented act of charity has gone unreported in the mainstream news. This act alone shows me, as I hope it will show at least one person who reads this, that a country that allows its citizens to control their own wealth is a country that will flourish more than a country that tries to keep a tight grip on it's citizens money and spend it how the government sees fit. If one were to look at some of the world's other richest people, who do not live in the US, I think you would see a vastly different trend. I don't have time to go into every crazy foreigner, but I will look at two who have stuck out to me personally. The first is Russian investor Roman Abramovich. Abramovich is the 9th richest person in Russia. From what I can find he does not give much to charity to help his fellow countrymen. He does however employ a 40 man security team, own a fleet of three of the world largest private yachts (he had a 4th but he gave it away to a friend, if you want to consider that charity) which collectively totaled around $2 billion to build, three helicopters, a 767 commercial jet, and a collection of homes around the world, the most expensive costing about $230 million. The second is Mukesh Ambani, an Indian businessman and the ninth richest man in the world. His greed can be summed up simply through reading about his home, named Antilia. Antilia is the largest home in the world. It is as tall as a 60 story building, cost between $1-2 billion and only houses him, his wife, his three children and his mother. I think this proves that while, our country may not be perfect, it is better than any other system that has been set up around the world. There are always going to be very wealthy people, at least the Americans have a great sense of morality and giving.
This country started from a group of people who just wanted to govern themselves and be free of governmental control over the basic things in their lives. After a century it grew into a country with budding businessmen, including John D. Rockefeller the founder of the Standard Oil Company (now the world’s largest company ExxonMobile) and the countries first billionaire. Mr. Rockefeller, on top of being one of the smartest businessmen our country has ever seen, also founded the modern philanthropy system which led to the many breakthroughs in education, science and medicine. If we continue to allow our citizens to work freely from governmental regulations, we will continue to flourish in the decades and centuries to come, if not, well greater dynasties than the US have fallen throughout the world's history...
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