Peter Daou is the former adviser to Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. In typical Marxist fashion, he asked this question: “Can you give me a good reason one person should have a BILLION dollars??”
His question implies an answer. No one should have a billion dollars. There is a political action attached to his implied answer: Someone should be empowered (him and those who think like him) to confiscate billions of dollars from billionaires.
Jonah Goldberg tweeted: “Can you give me a good reason you should be the person to decide who has a billion dollars? Also, if you want to take Tom Steyer and George Soros’s money, you can start there.”
Someone earing a billion dollars does not hurt me. In fact, many billionaires make our lives better. And once all the billionaires are gone, then what? After these billions are redistributed to the less fortunate, then what? We become Cuba and Venezuela. The incentive to make a buck is done. Let’s not forget that a company like Apple started in a garage.
Here’s a list of 12 billion-dollar-companies that started in garages:
- Microsoft
- Dell
- Amazon
- Apple
- Hewlett Packard
- Yankee Candles
- Disney
- Harley Davidson
- Maglite
- Mattel
- Lotus
Apple employs nearly 50,000 people. Amazon employs 647,500 full- and part-time employees. These numbers don’t take into account all the companies that benefit directly or indirectly from Apple or Microsoft products. Consider how many businesses have started up because of Amazon and eBay, a company that was founded in Pierre Omidyar’s living room in September 1995.
When Daou was quickly answered by several people as to several reasons why it’s OK for people to have a billion dollars, he changed the focus of the debate with this response:
So all the world’s billionaires just made wonderful things, they didn’t gain any advantage from a system geared to squeeze the last drop of blood out of working people, they weren’t helped with obscene tax breaks…. it was just their wonderful gift?
Actress Kirsti Allen responded with this:
You asked for ONE good reason a single person should have a billion dollars. I gave you ONE. There are several more. You didn’t ask for a debate or a thesis.
Having had enough of Daou’s envious insanity, Allen ended with this.
What right does Daou or anyone else have to take what belongs to someone else? Once all the billions are gone, does anyone think it will stop with billionaires? Multimillionaires will be next. The multi-thousandaires will be next, and those passing laws to proceed with the confiscation will be living in their high castles immune from the devastation they created with their envious policies. Do you want proof?:
Nine of the 20 richest counties in the United States—when measured by median household income—are suburbs of Washington, D.C., according to data released today by the Census Bureau. In fact, two counties in the Northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., are richer than the two California counties that constitute Silicon Valley. (CNS News)
Daou and those who think like him are exhibiting the sin of envy. Envy is not jealousy or covetousness. Envy is the politics of destruction. If I can’t have what you have then neither can you have it. To make sure you can’t have it, the envious person will destroy it.
The most severe and heartbreaking act of envy is when a father or mother decides to kill their children so the other parent can’t assume custody.
The Bible has a lot to say about envy. Here’s one example:
Now Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. And the Lord blessed him, and the man became rich, and continued to grow richer until he became very wealthy; for he had possessions of flocks and herds and a great household, so that the Philistines envied him. Now all the wells which his father’s servants had dug in the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines stopped up by filling them with earth (Gen. 26:12-15).
Instead of learning why Isaac was wealthy, the Philistines decided to sabotage one of his assets. Who got hurt in the process? The Philistines and anyone else who used Isaac’s well! There would most likely be a domino effect of a loss of production for people who purchased Isaac’s “flocks and herds.”
It didn’t matter because the Philistines got that rich bastard Isaac and all his flocks. That showed him!
Envy is one of the seven deadly sins. It’s a destroyer. “A sound heart is the life of the flesh: but envy the rottenness of the bones” (Prov. 14:30).
[caption id="" align=“alignnone” width=“487”]
Invidia (Envy) by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1569)[/caption]
Today’s Leftists are like the Philistines. They envy those who are more prosperous than they are forgetting that it’s rich people who create jobs. Governments don’t create jobs unless you consider stealing money from some people and giving it to other people as creating jobs.