The American Spectator

p> TEACH YOUR MARXIST CHILDREN WELL br> Re: William Tucker’s What Conservatives Want : /p> p>What a fantastic analysis; it ought to be required reading for all, along with the writings of Thomas Sowell AND Walter Williams. Thank you! br> — Steven Dennis br> Raleigh, North Carolina /p>

William Tucker’s lamentations on his son’s politics and the never-ending class warfare battles of Paul Krugman, et al., reminded me of a recent news item. The story summed up a report by an economic think tank, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, that once again attempted to quantify the rich-get-richer-and-the-poor-get-poorer theory, with the claim that in some areas, the economic/income gap between the top and the bottom of the scale has grown since the 1980s.

Mr. Tucker referenced Thomas Sowell, a man who I also believe is our greatest living philosopher. Ironically, at the same time I read the story and report mentioned above, I was working my way through a used copy of Sowell’s 1995 masterpiece The Vision of the Anointed. The timing couldn’t have been better. The tragic economic analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities served as a perfect example of Sowell’s theories on how the “anointed” (translation: the American Left) bend and twist statistics and assumptions to create problem for which the only solutions are, as expected, taking more from America’s achievers or increasing “entitlements” like unemployment or the minimum wage. Of course, we all know how well such programs improve the overall economy and help close that income gap.

Sowell discusses this exact scenario, along with many other similar ones in The Vision of the Anointed, proving that his theories on liberalism, documented 15 years ago, still hold true today, perhaps with even greater intensity. The authors of the report don’t seem to account for Sowell’s obvious conclusion that people frequently don’t remain in the same economic situation over a long period of time. In 1980, I worked in retail and made about $15,000 a year. My wife was a teacher and made even less. Twenty-eight years later, through hard work and persistence, we make a solid six-figure combined income. When I retire in about 20 years, I will, in all likelihood, be in a different economic bracket than I am today. That is, if taxes don’t eat away all my retirement investments, at which point I will rejoin the bottom of that economic scale.

As anecdotal as my story might be, I’d bet that it’s similar to that of millions of other people over that period of time. There will always be rich and poor and varying degrees of wealth in between. The idea is to move as high as possible. Paul Krugman may believe that “Americans, understandably, have lost confidence in the prospects for a return to real prosperity,” but I’m not buying it.