So far the race for the Democratic nomination is the crudest I can recall seeing in my lifetime.
It's a race to see who can most demonize "the rich" and make the most promises to the non-rich.
Yes, that sounds like every election cycle, but I'll bet you agree with me that it's especially severe this time around.
I'll say it again: if you spend your time dwelling on things billionaires have that you don't, you're a loser.
Now it looks like Bernie, too, is jumping in.
Which reminds me: I made a YouTube video about him last time around. It was called, "The Question Bernie Supporters Won't Answer."
It ran like this:
(Usual caveat: I don't defend people whose fortunes depend on state action.)
To people in the developing world, your lifestyle seems as remote and unbelievable as that of the American 1% seems to you.
You, after all, are yourself in the global 1% if you earn even $32,400 a year.
So:
Is the rest of the world entitled to help themselves to your things in the same way that you consider yourself entitled to help yourself to the things of the American 1%?
They'll hem and haw, and utter irrelevancies like, "Bernie isn't running for president of the world!" Yes, I get the jurisdiction issue, but that's irrelevant to the moral question: if wealth inequality is morally wrong, shouldn't we work toward a world in which we eliminate it, and aren't national borders just arbitrary obstacles in the way of this moral imperative?
No answer.
The reason there's no answer is that for many of these folks wealth redistribution is fine as long as they're on the receiving end.
And when we look at what they want to spend the money on, these are products that are artificially expensive because of state involvement in the first place: Dr. Josh Umbehr, whom I interviewed on my podcast, shows how astonishingly inexpensive health care can be when insurance (artificially encouraged by state incentives) and government are removed from the picture.
Anyway:
Focus not on billionaires and their yachts.
Focus on yourself and how you can improve your life.
Step one is tomorrow night's session with the brilliant Steve Clayton, who has helped a boatload of my listeners start their own side businesses or even full-time businesses.
No more boss, no more tiptoeing around politics in the workplace, no more doing someone else's bidding.
And as an added bonus: for every single person who attends, we'll be donating $10 to the Scott Horton Show.
Forget the redistributors.
Make something for yourself:
Tom Woods