How to succeed by merit

[Valin]

The Indy Star:

Ryan Streeter
12/14/11

In the fabricated world of the Occupy Wall Street movement, there are two classes of people: the 99 percent and the 1 percent.

The problem with Occupy Wall Street is that it gets the notion of "class" wrong. Its adherents actually know this. No bearded misfit sitting in a festering tent on public property would say that Steve Jobs (whose product the bearded misfit uses to post his third-rate Marxist blogs) is no different from Bernie Madoff or Jack Abramoff. Jobs is not in the same "class" as Madoff and Abramoff. Jobs got rich making the world better for us. Madoff and Abramoff got rich by hurting others.

The bearded misfit, if he really thinks about it, doesn't care about the top 1 percent. He cares about those who are super-rich but shouldn't be. It is in this way (and perhaps only this way) that the protesters are old-fashioned Americans. They don't think it's right that people should get so much without earning it.

It's not success but "earned success" that matters. American Enterprise Institute president Arthur Brooks says that earned success is "the ability to create value honestly -- not by winning the lottery, not by inheriting a fortune, not by picking up a welfare check. It doesn't even mean making money itself. Earned success is the creation of value in our lives or in the lives of others." Brooks has produced a lot of research showing that people are happiest not when they have a lot of money, but when they produce value of their own accord.

(Snip)

It's time to stop protesting a false premise and focus instead on promoting earned success. Do we need to end too-big-too-fail policies? Yes. Do we need to end harmful welfare programs? Yes. But most of all, we need to encourage earned success in our own homes. That's where the real change begins.


H/T Common Ground Politics