Honestly, Obs, I didn't want to go there because it opens up a whole 'nother can of worms but I am appalled that more Americans don't recognize an income tax for what it is: indentured servitude. The government claims ownership of the fruits of your labors for a substantial portion of the year. Something that would have had the Founding Fathers turning over in their graves because one of their core beliefs was that a man should be the sole owner of what he himself has created.
And an income tax is THE most regressive form of taxation possible because when times are hard, there is NOTHING you can do to reduce your indebtedness to the government that doesn't also negatively impact your gross income.
An income tax is immoral and I'm sure the Dead Old Rich White Guys would agree with me on that point.
Anybody who doesn't endeavor to increase their own wealth is either an idiot or a monk. Being rich is no sin and being jealous of the rich for no other reason than they're rich is a manifestation of self-loathing. It's also the fundamental and defining characteristic of all progressivist/socialist/communist [pick one] movements.
Without getting into the side issue of slavery, which is a holy war all to itself, the Founding Fathers made their wealth through entrepreneurship. Nobody got poorer as they got richer, they got richer because they succeeded in investing and risking their own talents and their own assets to create more wealth. They grew it, they didn't steal it.
In a speech he gave at Georgetown University in 2012 (it's on YouTube), even Bono (rich asshole rock star) admitted that America's greatest gift to the world was the idea of capitalism, because capitalism reduces poverty.
And I find it absurd to contend that they would forsake England for America just to become rich because the richest man in America lived less lavishly than any low-placed nobleman or aristocrat in England.
The best clothing and wines all came from Europe. Virtually all the tea and paper products came from Europe. In 1776 there were only two places on earth where they made fine porcelain china, Saxony (in what is now Germany) and China itself. And you can't possibly have a rich asshole's fancy dining room without fine china. Which meant rich assholes in America would have to pay for it to be shipped across the Atlantic ocean or they couldn't have it.
Riches effectively bought more tangible wealth in England than in the Colonies for the simple fact that England was part of Europe and America was a weeks-long sea voyage away. All the trappings of wealth came from Europe, so why the hell didn't they just move there rather than living in the backwater settlements that were Colonial America?
They stayed in America because the Founding Fathers knew they were building something besides wealth, they were building a new nation, one whose like the world had never seen before.
America was the first nation that ever embraced capitalism and entrepreneurship as one of its core beliefs, and the first nation that ever existed that grew rich largely without the use of conquest ethos.
Other cultures have as much as reviled the merchant and the shopkeeper. In the caste system of India's Hindu religion, the merchant is in the next-to-lowest category. Arab historian
Ibn Khaldun wrote that looting is morally preferable to being a merchant or a tradesman, because looting is a "manly" pursuit. To loot you must first face the man in open combat and defeat him. Whereas all the merchant need do is lie in wait for his victim. Not in the least manly.
For an English aristocrat of the era, to have been involved in any form of trade or entrepreneurship was to disgrace your family name, which amounted to the entrenchment of an economic system where the only way you could get rich was to be born that way. It essentially was the same philosophy that underpinned their monarchy: if God had wanted you to be rich, you'd have been born that way.
The British system was so intent on holding down "the little man" that they even created a special denomination of currency -- the guinea -- that was reserved for aristocrats. And most fine goods could only be bought with guineas, and were not for sale for an equivalent value with pounds sterling. Which made these goods exclusive to the upper classes. Industrialists, entrepreneurs, inventors and merchants need not apply.
Lacking any ability to "grow" wealth internally (i.e., a "value-added" economy), the only way to gain wealth is to take it from someone who already has it. Conquest ethos. Every wealthy nation that ever existed got that way through conquest ethos. Colonization and exploitation.
All except one. The United States of America. America was created with an enthusiasm for entrepreneurship and the value-added economy. Because the rich asshole Founding Fathers recognized there is
no other way to grow yourself rich than a value added economy.
And a rising tide lifts all boats. In a capitalism-driven free-market economy, no one ever gets rich in isolation. The rich
always have financial coattails. And the richer they are, the longer their coattails.
Rome got rich through conquest. Expansion of the empire at the point of a gladius. The most of the Roman Forum, the ruins of which today are the very icon of Rome's greatness, were built by the Emperor Trajan. Trajan invaded
Dacia to pillage their famously rich gold mines specifically so he could build a lasting monument to himself. The Roman Forum is that monument. Fifty thousand tourists a day visit the monument to Trajan's invasion of Dacia. Conquest ethos.
Louis XIV of France fought a series of four wars to raise enough money to build his palace at Versailles. At its peak, Versailles had so many fountains (1400, more or less) that they could never get enough water to keep them all flowing at once. In fact, Versailles' fountains and the palace's indoor plumbing collectively used more water in a day than was available for the entire city of Paris.
King Louie's engineer even built a 10-mile-long aqueduct to a nearby river, complete with a paddlewheel-driven pumping station that pumped the water to a height of 490 vertical feet above the river so it could flow over the hill that stood between the riverbank and Versailles. But that still wasn't enough water. So whenever the King was strolling the grounds, a groundskeeper was assigned the duty of running ahead of him to have the water turned on to whatever fountains Louie was approaching.
England's lust for conquest was so great that by the time of Queen Victoria, she was Empress over 450 million people -- one-fourth of the entire planet's population -- in more than 60 different countries. It was in that era that the phrase was coined, "the sun never sets on the British Empire." Because it didn't. Its empire was so vast that there was never a moment of the day when there wasn't a British territory somewhere where it was daylight. Queen Victoria's great-great granddaughter, Queen Elizabeth II, is the richest woman in the world. Conquest ethos.
Before WWII started in earnest, Hitler annexed Austria, the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia and Poland. Because conquest is the fastest means and offers the best potential return on investment of all the "get-rich-quick" schemes. The land-grab didn't work out so well for him, but he gave it a good shot.
America didn't get rich off of conquest. There were some few lands seized through warfare from the middle to the late 1800s, but usually not for reasons of conquest. Most of those eventually were made autonomous or independent. And since the Spanish American War, through two World Wars, Korea and Vietnam, the only land we have demanded from the conquered was a place to bury our dead.
Americans created their wealth out of thin air through innovation, entrepreneurship and trade. Every last man of the rich asshole Founding Fathers also was an entrepreneur, and America needed every last one of them if they were going to light the economic bonfire that could turn a bunch of ragtag colonies into a wealthy nation.
George Washington was one of the richest men in America.
THE richest, by some accounts. But he had to borrow money to pay his travel expenses for the trip to Washington
for his own inauguration as President of the 13 United States.
Why was such a rich man so cash-poor? Because he saw the wisdom in keeping his money employed in the business of making
still more money. He intentionally stayed financially leveraged because that was the most cost-conscious thing to do.
I've been to Hurst Castle and the Biltmore Estate. And Windsor Castle and Versailles. And the Taj Mahal (not a residence but its grandeur is still emblematic of an opulent lifestyle). Hell, I even spent a year working from an office in one of Saddam Hussein's marble palaces. So I've seen how
real rich assholes live.
I've also been to Mount Vernon. And to Monticello. Those are not the homes of rich assholes. I've seen the homes of the
real rich assholes, and Mount Vernon and Monticello don't even come close. Hell, George Washington was SO FUCKING CHEAP he couldn't turn loose of the money to build Mount Vernon from brick or stone. So it's built from wood, covered with plaster that they drew grid lines on
to make it look like it was made from brick.
Washington and Jefferson and most of the rest who were truly rich didn't live in opulence because they were too strapped spending what they had earned to build a greater America.
Bill Gates is, if not THE richest, one of the three or four richest men on earth. He has a 66,000 square foot home in Seattle. He's also
one of the biggest assholes who ever drew breath. Gates wanted to fire childhood friend and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen because he didn't think Allen, who was fighting cancer at the time, was being productive enough.
They were childhood friends. The way Gates learned to write programming code (in high school) was that he and Allen went dumpster-diving outside buildings in Seattle that had mainframe computers, searching for computer printouts that might have been thrown away. Gates was so short that he needed a boost from Allen to get into the dumpsters. Later, it was Allen who convinced Gates to drop out of Harvard and start a software company with him, which they named Microsoft. Without Allen, Gates might never have learned to code. Might never have founded Microsoft.
But Gates wanted Allen fired because his cancer had made him sick.
Gates also was the single most influential individual in the creation of the world-wide PC industry. Thousands of people who Gates never even met became millionaires building, marketing or selling PCs. They didn't steal the money, and nobody got poorer because they got rich. It's a value-added industry, which they grew from thin air. People bought billions of dollars worth of PC products because they were willing to spend their discretionary funds on them.
Without the influence of Bill Gates, the evolution of the PC industry probably would have lagged behind years, maybe decades. It might never have grown into the juggernaut it is today. So I don't think the world so much minds absorbing one more asshole if it means that much prosperity coming along for the ride.
And in a capitalist economy, no one ever gets rich in isolation. Gates didn't build that 66,000 square foot house by his assholey lonesome.
Never before in the history of the world has a nation accrued so much power as America and abused it so little. So even if the Founding Fathers were rich assholes (and I
will not concede that they were), then I think that can be forgiven in light of what their good works have wrought.