Friday, September 23, 2011

Elizabeth Warren: There is nobody who got rich on his own. Nobody

Elizabeth Warren is the law professor who earned everyone's praise for her performance as the chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the U.S. banking bailout (formally known as the Troubled Assets Relief Program). Now she is a United States Senate candidate.

Here's her socio-economic lesson for those who called Pres. Barack Obama’s proposed new tax increases for the rich (up from 35% to 39%) as “class warfare”.
I hear all this, you know, ‘Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.' No. There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.
You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.
Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

A good education for the 'cult of self-made' so popular nowadays. 

Labels: , ,