WHY WE NEED RICH PEOPLE

Wouldn't it be nice if the rich weren't so rich and the poor weren't so poor? In actuality, things would be worse if there were no rich people. Here's why we're better off with wealthy people.

First of all, rich folks invest their money. Unlike a dragon lying on a mountain of gold and jewels, wealthy business people create jobs through their industries. Money is useless unless it passes from one person to another. Business owners hire people to make products and perform services. Those workers then buy the products and services from others.

Wealth is greatly multiplied through capitalism, whereas hoarding wealth retards the growth of a country's economy. Socialist schemes also diminish a country's growth in that civil servants don't produce products and they often give poor service. When governments try to run businesses, the results are woefully pathetic. Furthermore, crown corporations such as Air Canada and Canada Post run deficits because they lack the competition present in situations where monopolies are non-existent.

Wealthy citizens buy luxury products and hire people to work for them. If everybody was equally poor, there would be no incentive to build homes and high-end cars. Nobody would be building and buying yachts and private jets either.

Neither would there be any incentive to achieve great things. When people are denied the opportunity to fulfil their dreams and reap the rewards of their work, they end up like workers in the former Soviet Union. Farmers who would work until the crop was gathered in would leave at quitting time. Craftspeople wouldn't work as hard because they have no reason to. Only when people have vested interest in their labour do they put their full energy into what they do.

Furthermore, entrepreneurs are much more likely to create innovative products than would be the case with government workers. The hope of profiting from their inventions drives talented individuals to accomplish feats of ingenuity, benefiting not only themselves but all of society.

Socialism, on the other hand, robs citizens of incentive. If they get the same pay for just doing their job as for coming up with a brilliant solution to a problem, folks are more likely not to bother doing more than they have to. This decreases tax revenues, giving governments incentive to raise taxes on fewer and fewer productive people. In the end, the economy craters.

Selling my books has taught me much about economics. By allowing failures, marketing has taught me about what sells and what doesn't. My first two paperbacks are available through the Bruce Atchison's books link. How I Was Razed is distributed by Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Virtual Bookworm Publishers.