“You cannot build prosperity by making success the enemy. Wealth must first be created before it can ever be shared.” — Michael Dietz
One thing I have noticed is that many of the loudest voices demanding we “tax the rich” or praising socialism and even communism have spent very little of their lives creating the wealth they now want government to redistribute. They speak confidently about taking more from those who have built businesses, invested their own money, and created jobs, yet many have never done those things themselves. It raises a simple question: Why are the people most eager to divide the harvest so rarely the ones who planted the field?
Take Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Before entering Congress, she worked as a bartender, waitress, and political organizer. There is absolutely nothing wrong with honest work. Every honest job deserves respect. But there is a tremendous difference between earning a paycheck and creating the business that provides it. One depends on an employer. The other requires risking your savings, borrowing money, solving problems every day, making payroll even when times are difficult, and accepting that everything you have worked for could disappear overnight.
Then there is Bernie Sanders. He has spent virtually his entire adult life in politics and government. For decades he has argued that government should take more from those who have accumulated wealth and redistribute it through federal programs. Yet before telling entrepreneurs how much they should surrender, where is the company he built? Where are the businesses he started? Where are the thousands of jobs he created by risking his own capital? It is much easier to write tax policy than it is to build the businesses that produce the taxes.
Representative Rashida Tlaib has followed a similar path. Her career has been in law, politics, and public office. Again, there is nothing dishonorable about public service. We need dedicated public servants. But there is a difference between administering tax dollars and creating the wealth that generates those tax dollars in the first place. One manages resources produced by others. The other creates the resources everyone depends upon.
The irony is difficult to ignore. Those who most often criticize wealth are frequently people whose careers have depended on wealth created by someone else. Government produces nothing on its own. Every road, every bridge, every military paycheck, every public school, every government program, and every congressional salary is funded because someone, somewhere, started a business, created a product, provided a service, hired employees, and paid taxes.
History teaches a lesson that never changes. Nations become prosperous because they encourage people to create wealth, innovate, invest, and take risks. They decline when success becomes something to punish instead of something to encourage. When government begins treating entrepreneurs as the problem rather than the engine of prosperity, fewer people are willing to take the risks that create jobs and opportunity. Eventually, there is less wealth to redistribute because there is less wealth being created. Before wealth can ever be taxed, donated, invested, or shared, someone must first create it. That requires vision, sacrifice, perseverance, and the willingness to risk failure.
Perhaps before demanding that those who build America surrender more of what they have earned, our leaders should first ask themselves one simple question: What have I built that created prosperity for someone else?
There is a profound difference between creating opportunity and redistributing opportunity. One expands the pie. The other merely decides how to divide it. History has shown us which one builds great nations.