What about those rich people, anyway? They seem to be in the political forefront these days. Either they are greedy bastards who don’t want to pay their fair share in taxes, or they are the job-creating saviors and we should let them make all the policies in their favor so they’ll create us more jobs.
Which is it? What role do rich people serve in society? Do we need them, or should we take all their wealth (well, we would leave them enough so they don’t have to work) and give it to everyone else? I’m not rich, so that does have a certain appeal. This is unless, of course, I need them to be who they are for some reason.
Take a trip with me for a minute. I’d like to take you on a visit to the city of Asheville, NC. Why? Because the largest home in America is located there. It is the Biltmore Estate, built in the very late 1800’s by George Vanderbilt, heir to the Cornelius Vanderbilt railroad fortune. It was George’s “little mountain escape”. This home is 175,000 square feet in area and took six years to build. Hundreds, if not thousands, of skilled and unskilled laborers were employed as well as architects, engineers, landscapers, and designers. The materials for Biltmore came from all over the world and required countless hours of paid human labor to mine, quarry, grow, or make. In the end, George spent over half of his family fortune on this one project.
After the home was built, hundreds of people in the Asheville area found jobs as groundskeepers for the vast acreage, farriers and blacksmiths for the stables, mechanics for the automobiles, maids, cooks, and all other sorts of domestic help imaginable. They were all paid somewhat higher than the going labor rates, because that is how George wanted things done.
Now, did Asheville benefit from George Vanderbilt choosing their area for his estate? The common playground for the rich was Newport, Rhode Island. To this day, however, the Biltmore Estate provides vast amounts of financial benefit to the Asheville area. It is the number one tourist destination in Asheville. It employs many people today. And it still belongs to the descendants of George Vanderbilt. By choosing to spend a vast portion of his inheritance in Asheville, the Asheville community benefited a great deal from the Vanderbilt family.
What if, instead, the government had confiscated 50% of George’s wealth? What would the outcome of that have been? Would it have been a net plus or negative to the nation overall? What would government have done with the money? We can only speculate. But when the rich spend or invest their money, I believe society benefits. And they do both of those things. Few rich people merely hunker down and count their hoarded money. They spend on things they want, and they invest in economic activities that fuel our economy. Yes, they strive to get richer. That’s what rich people do.
Those of us who are not rich can resent them, and demand that the government step in and take from them a larger “fair share”. And maybe, with historically low capital gains tax rates, that kind of policy would indeed be fairer. However, it is all too easy to get caught up in the motivations that come from resentment, envy, and lust for what the other guy has. Our government has tried multiple kinds of “stimulus”, cash for clunkers, first time homebuyer tax credits, and financial bailouts all while telling us these steps would create a healthy economy. Sometimes I think the politicians just try things, not knowing really what might help, and then they just cross their fingers. I’d just hate to see them drive away the very people in our society whose activities truly are needed to fuel economic prosperity. I may not trust rich people to have my best interests at heart, but I’ve not found any more reason to trust politicians to any greater extent. The political process is broken, but I don’t feel compelled to jump on the “hate the rich” bandwagon that seems to be developing steam.
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