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David McElroy

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Envy drives hatred for the wealthy, but I want to earn my way to riches

By David McElroy · January 22, 2019

Do you know why I’m not wealthy yet? I do.

It’s because I haven’t made the right decisions at some key times in my life. I’ve failed to take advantage of the right opportunities to provide enough value to other people that they would voluntarily pay me for it.

But, wait. The socialists of the world — now mainstream among Democratic Party politicians — tell us we’re not rich because the billionaires of the world are keeping all the money for themselves. Shouldn’t we make them give us some of their wealth?

Only the economically ignorant — such as socialists — could think this is true. And only the truly immoral could think the answer is to steal from some individuals to give to other individuals. To take money from a person against his will is theft, no matter how nicely you dress it up in dishonest “good intentions.”

It’s become fashionable lately to obsess about economic inequality, but this obsession is very misguided. As long as I have the chance to better my own life — through my ideas and my work — why would I care that some people have wealth that’s a thousand times (or a million times) what I have?

The only reason I would be concerned about someone having more than I have is if wealth were a zero-sum game. Since I am not ignorant enough to believe such a thing, I know that the wealth someone else creates has no bearing on whether I can make myself prosperous, too.

A “zero-sum game” is one in which there is a fixed amount of something which distributed among the players. For instance, if you were playing a game in which everyone competed for 100 tokens — and there were exactly 100 tokens in existence — every time someone else gained one token, someone else would have to lose one. Every time I gained a token, it would have to be taken from someone else.

That’s the ignorant assumption of socialists and progressives (and even a lot of people who think they’re conservatives). They see wealth as a fixed amount which is simply distributed among the people of a country or the world. They think that millionaire and billionaires have gotten wealthy by doing things which made other people poor.

But these ignorant people are mistaken.

Wealth is created and destroyed, depending on who provides value and who dissipates value. It’s really not complicated, but most people today choose to ignore some simple facts.

If I provide a service to someone, I am paid for my service. If I provide a service which has more value than the service provided by someone else, I will be paid more. It’s up to me to find services which other people want which I am willing to provide. I make the most money when I find the thing which provides the most value to other people.

I cannot get wealthy without providing some value (or perceived value) to other people. Otherwise, why would they pay me?

Since I’ve been working in real estate, I have had a front row seat for observing something interesting. What I’ve noticed is that sets of values tend to go together — and you can predict a lot about people’s financial destiny by paying attention to their values.

People who live for today and complain all the time about life not being fair tend to have nothing. These people believe the world owes them something and they believe they are smart to cheat others when they can get away with it. These people spend a lot of money on nice consumer goods — but they never have any money to invest in their own futures. They can’t pay their bills. And when it comes time for them to be evicted from a home when they can’t pay for it, they complain that it’s somebody else’s fault.

People who are constantly looking for ways to provide more value to others — and who believe they are responsible for themselves — tend to have very different outcomes. The smartest among them spend little (or nothing) on status symbols and nice consumer goods. They’re constantly looking for ways to live more frugally so they can invest more in their own futures. They are scrupulous about paying everything which they have agreed to pay, because they value their honor. If they do lose homes or businesses or fortunes, they accept the defeat with dignity and learn from their mistakes as they plot a way to recover.

There are obviously many other variations in people’s values. Some people come from upper class families and have lousy values, slowly squandering all that their families have made. (I could give you plenty of examples and you probably know people like this, too.) There are others who exist at a middle ground of barely having enough, never quite falling apart but never really rising above — always thinking life is unfair. This sort of person has no plan for life and is swept along by every economic current that comes along, good or bad. And there are other people who simply haven’t yet figured out how to create wealth.

The point is that some people get lucky and are born into the right families or happen to be paid for something completely out of reach to normal people, such as being a professional athlete or a movie star.

But for most of us, our values determine our financial destiny.

Socialists don’t want to hear this, because they see poor people as victims. They don’t understand that those who are poor can almost always better their prospects by changing their values and by providing more and better service to others. They prefer for government to steal money from productive people to hand it to poor people instead.

Socialists and progressives are completely oblivious to the well-known fact that unearned money is almost always squandered. They don’t understand that the same values which made someone poor to start with will make the person poor again even if you hand him a large chunk of money. (Research what happens to almost every lottery winner, if you don’t believe me.)

The thing which holds almost everybody back from becoming prosperous is their own values and habits, not the wealth of anybody else. But the politics and culture of envy are powerful in the world today.

Economic ignorance among politicians and the people around you is very dangerous. When politicians and voters believe that taking money from one group to give it to another is a cure for poverty, it’s a sure-fire plan for destroying wealth. When you take stored value from people who understand how to earn it and give it to people who have no understanding of earned value, the money will be squandered — and little or nothing will be left to show for it.

What’s even more dangerous is moral ignorance. It’s bad if you don’t understand economics well enough to predict what is going to happen when wealth is stolen from productive people. (Those people have far less incentive to be productive if they know their money will be stolen.) But the core issue that matters most is the moral one.

Even if you don’t understand economics, every child can understand why it’s wrong for someone to steal things from another person. A child also understands why it’s wrong for multiple people to gang up on those who have things they want.

If you can understand that it’s immoral to take someone’s money or property against his will — and if you can understand that it’s no more moral if an entire neighborhood gangs up on the richest family in the neighborhood to take their money — then you should be able to understand why that gang calling itself “the government” doesn’t make the theft moral.

Those who are productive have been willing to allow our money to be stolen for too long. What’s worse, we have allowed this theft to happen with our consent — because we were brainwashed as children to believe this theft was perfectly acceptable as long as the bullies call it “taxation.”

The truth is that the majority can control us — and can steal our money — but they can do it only with force. Those who favor these evil positions refuse to see the force and the threats behind their positions. We have to make it clear to them what their nice-sounding policy proposals really mean. Their evil policies are enforced at the barrel of a gun.

If you don’t believe me, ask yourself what would happen if you refused to pay what government demanded as taxation.

First, bureaucrats would send you threats of confiscating money from your bank accounts and threaten you with penalties. Let’s say you withdrew all your money from banks and kept it at your home.

Second, those bureaucrats would get this government’s own courts to rule that you must turn your money over, but what if you refused?

Third, armed men — police or some enforcement arm — would physically try to take what you refuse to turn over. They would call you a criminal for refusing to obey.

So all of these fancy words about helping others are ultimately backed up by physical force. You would eventually be shot or imprisoned if you tried to defend yourself and your property. Without this force or threat of force, taxes would not be paid.

And money which is taken from people against their will — through force or threat of force — is being stolen. Don’t ever forget that.

Is there any point at which you’re willing to say, “No, you can’t do this”? How far does evil have to push before you call theft and coercion by their proper names?

When you hear socialists and progressives saying that millionaires and billionaires are a moral issue, remember that they’re right — just not in the way they mean.

To allow men and women to use their own skills and values and time and effort to become wealthy is the most moral thing that any community can do. If many of those productive people want to give to others and try to teach them how they, too, can be come productive, that’s even better for everyone. But wealth-building is a moral issue. Any group which prevents people from growing their wealth through providing more and better value is immoral.

I’m not envious of billionaires. I’m not angry with millionaires. I’m very aware that some people get rich by luck or even by providing services which I see as wrong. That’s going to happen at times.

But more than anything else, I know that I’m responsible for my own financial destiny. I don’t want to bring billionaires down. I want opportunity for everyone. I want to become wealthy — by providing more and more value for others — so that I can be one of those billionaires myself.

Immoral people steal. Moral people grow wealth by voluntarily providing value for others, no matter what the angry and envious thugs scream to the rabble in the streets.

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For “throwback Thursday, let me introduce you to For “throwback Thursday, let me introduce you to Sam. In 2009, I took in a young feral cat who I named for the early American revolutionary Samuel Adams. He was one of the most confident — downright arrogant, in fact — cats I’ve ever been around. He had an amazing personality and I immediately loved him. He was no more than 8 or 9 months old when he suddenly died for reasons that my vet couldn’t explain. Even though I had him only a short time, he was one of my all-time favorites. #tbt #cats #tabby #feral #birmingham #alabama
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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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