GOP protesters have it backwards

I recently caught some television coverage of the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia. Outside the GOP convention, as we all know, are assorted protesters–unproductive people who apparently have nothing better to do with their lives.

These ardent political agitators live for heavily reported disruption. They want the whole world to know that they cannot live without unwarranted government intrusions into our private and economic lives. Their message to the Federal Government essentially is: “tax me, regulate me, subsidize me, because I cannot do things for myself, without a great deal of paternalistic Federal help.”

One interviewed protester, a young black woman, for example, indignantly called for universal healthcare. She actually wanted government-mandated healthcare for all Americans (and all future generations of Americans).

“This is the richest country in the world,” she lamented. “Why should we have poor [people]?”

Unfortunately, millions of Americans probably feel exactly the same way. Operating primarily from emotions rather than from sound economic and logical reasoning, they have got it all wrong.

The very existence of inequality is the key reason for rampant U.S. prosperity (low inflation, low unemployment, and solid GDP growth). In other words, inequality is precisely the reason the United States of America is the richest country on earth.

All things considered, inequality is a remarkably good thing. Inequality–that is, merit-based free market inequality–is what makes the whole economic world go round.

Without free market-based inequality, we would have stagnation, deterioration and appalling mass poverty. Inequality–allowing successful individuals to keep the fruits of their labor–provides enormous economic incentives. It gives productive people the desire and the motivation needed to continually create and produce even more jobs, even more technological innovations, and even more economic growth for most, if not all, people to eventually enjoy. (Remember that even the poorest of the poor in America are a heck of a lot better off than the poorest of the poor in Bangladesh.)

Make no mistake about it: Complete economic equality is tyranny. It is socialistic communism–a Marxist political and economic doctrine that has totally been discredited by decades of appalling history: in Vietnam, in Cambodia, in Cuba, in China, in North Korea, in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union–everywhere it has been tried. Economic equality is a losing proposition well verified by history.

Economist Adam Smith had it right back in 1776. When he wrote “An Inquiry into the Wealth of Nations,” he spoke of an all-pervasive “Invisible Hand” that creates good through no intention of its own. In other words, the greedy capitalist who exclusively pursues his own selfish interests often benefits society unintentionally, despite widespread inequality. Merely look at the results: the United States of America, by far the richest country on earth, wrought by rampant inequality and, ideally at least, damn proud of it!