OPINION:
Lamenting Elon Musk recently becoming a trillionaire, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts Democrat, said: “Elon Musk has more money and more wealth than anyone in human history.”
To which I say, “So?”
King Solomon was probably a trillionaire by today’s standards. Perhaps Warren missed the biblical stories about his wealth and more importantly the Book of Ecclesiastes, which he wrote and said: “I hated the things I worked so hard for here under the sun, because I will have to leave them to someone who comes after me.” (Ecclesiastes 2:18)
Warren and her ideological twin, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Vermont Democrat, think many people are hanging on by their fingernails (Warren’s words) in a struggling economy and should pay more in taxes to the government, which presumably will redistribute it to those fingernail holders.
This is the central flaw in socialism. It is the idea that if you make more money than I do, you “owe” me some of it. That might be true if there were only a fixed amount of money in a jar and I took more than my “fair share.” But the money supply is unlimited for people who follow what were once known as “the rules.” These included staying in school (school choice is sweeping the land), getting married before you have babies, saving and investing wisely, staying off drugs and developing good character.
The reason socialism has become so popular, especially among the young, is that Americans have never had to live under it. Young people have no experience with it and no knowledge of it. People who have come to the United States from former communist and socialist countries are amazed that so many think these systems are better than capitalism and freedom. Today, freedom has become license, which is not freedom at all, but bondage.
The values of “The Greatest Generation” are fast disappearing. The reason they were great is because they lived by certain principles: personal responsibility and accountability, duty, patriotism, and treating government as a last resort, not a first resource. Envy, greed and especially entitlement are replacing inspiration, motivation and perspiration.
As a young reporter I interviewed many wealthy people. I didn’t envy them. I wanted to be like them. Warren and Sanders believe people’s circumstances are fixed, and if you are poor or “struggling,” that is your lot for life. Why don’t they consider the millions who have risen from poverty to self-sustainment and urge people to follow their example? The answer is that the less people rely on government, the more that harms a politician’s political career.
Ronald Reagan used to say, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.”
His ideological mate, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, echoed his view when she said, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
And this from the “Iron Lady”: “It is good to recall how our freedom has been gained in this country not by great abstract campaigns but through the objections of ordinary men and women to having their money taken from them by the State. In the early days, people banded together and said to the then-Government, ’You shall not take our money before you have redressed our grievances.’ It was their money, their wealth, which was the source of their independence against the Government.”
Then there was this line from our tax-reducing 30th president, Calvin Coolige: “I want taxes to be less that the people might have more.”
The revelations of fraud, especially by states mishandling our tax dollars, is reason enough to “starve the beast.” We don’t need socialism in America. We need more capitalism. Young people had better learn that. If they don’t, they will discover what they now embrace in theory they will come to regret in practice.
• Cal Thomas is one of the most popular syndicated columnists in the United States, appearing in hundreds of newspapers. He is a veteran of TV and radio news. For 19 years, he worked for the Fox News Channel and before that with NBC News and KPRC-TV in Houston. He began his journalism career at the age of 16. In 2024, he marked his 40th anniversary of his column.
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