John Eidson <johneidson@comcast.net>
Facts and fallacies about America’s economic pie By John Eidson | July 11, 2019
Fed a constant diet of economic lies by anti-capitalists in our society, the millennial generation has been conned into believing that the wealthy get rich only by stealing an unfair slice of America’s economic pie. By taking more than their fair share, the theory goes, greedy corporate CEOs leave little but crumbs for everyone else. Such thinking is referred to as the zero sum theory of economics: that there is only one finite-sized pie to go around.
In truth, America does not have a finite economic pie. Rather, it has a virtually unlimited supply of ever-evolving economic pies of varying sizes waiting to be made by enterprising people from every race and every income group.
The biggest such pies are made by high-profile capitalists like Warren Buffet and the Koch brothers, all three of whom generously share their self-created economic pies not only with a myriad of charities, but also with hundreds of thousands of well-paid employees who eagerly work for their thriving corporate empires.
Millions of other economic pies are made by less famous job creating risk takers, those whose small businesses provide more than 80% of America’s private sector employment. Still more economic pies are made by the 160 million people who comprise the backbone of our society, those who earn a slice of their country’s widespread prosperity simply by getting up and going to work so they can provide for themselves and their family by working hard and learning to live within their means.
Unfortunately, there will always be some who habitually make bad decisions, financial or otherwise. Frustrated that self-created problems have kept them from fully participating in the American dream, they bitterly complain that someone else made off with their share of the pie. With nothing but crumbs on their plates, these 1