THE RIGHTS OF THE RICH

"Whatever is not nailed down is mine. Whatever I can pry loose is not nailed down."
Colis P. Huntington, 19th Century Railroad Magnate

"Why should men leave great fortunes to their children? Observation teaches that, generally speaking, it is not well for the children that they should be so burdened."
Andrew Carnegie, "Wealth"

Paris Hilton will probably never vote for Barack Obama. He holds her up as a picture book example, cute, clueless, careless, of why taxes on the rich should be raised. Her unembarrassed example fails to convince a hard core of Obama's political opponents, who are determined not only to let the wealthy keep their current tax reductions, but to give them even more. To many of us in the masses, the politicians, lobbyists, and lawyers who pander for the benefit of the plutocracy have understandable, though ignoble, motives. By pleasing the rich, they might get rich too. And many of them do. There are many, however, who are not rich, yet still insist that the rich are entitled to all their money. In the interest of fairness, which the rich demand whether or not they grant it, we must ask some questions. Are there valid moral justifications for greed? Should greed be removed from the deadly sins list and added to the virtues? Where does reality fit in?
All human beings justify their actions, at least while they do them. Captains of industry and finance, and their defenders, insist that getting and keeping more is a righteous goal. Huntington stopped short of admitting he stole by claiming it was all his in the first place. Pirates from Alexander the Great to Jesse James have surely felt the same. From the onset of the Industrial Revolution, capitalist plutocrats have always believed their actions were the guiding lights of human progress, that mankind could not have advanced from the caves were it not for high minded men such as themselves. They may have done some awful deeds, but it's all been worth it.
Yes, railroad builder Huntington helped make our country great. How that fact justifies his right to everything he could grab, how his justification differs from open theft, may be hard to explain, but greed is a powerful addiction. Carnegie, who made steel readily available worldwide, claimed that humanity's lot was better as a direct result of capitalist conflict and disruption. He made that claim sixteen years before Ayn Rand, the modern guru of greed, was even born. Over the last century, history has witnessed many wars, depressions, and environmental disasters. Stacked up, these calamities evoke serious doubts whether on balance, the human race is better off since capitalism has held sway over human events. Still, there are many influential voices that continue to preach the wonders of unmitigated greed.
The main reason Carnegie is ignored today by modern apologists for wealth is that Carnegie states flatly that wealthy people should give away most of their money, to pay for the damages they caused in the acquisition process. As one who had been there, he could say with assurance that competition demands that businessmen have a lot of money to do what they need to do. But once the industrial or financial empires are built and in place, the winners no longer need those huge fortunes, and they are obliged to give the money back. He also says that if the rich insist on keeping their wealth, the public has the right to tax them to get what normal people need. Some modern billionaires, led by Bill Gates, George Soros, and Warren Buffet, are practicing what Carnegie preached. They are voices in the wilderness, given the powerful narcotic of greed. Most rich people, and those who strive to imitate them, cling to the belief that selfishness alone is the root of all human progress. So the debate goes on.
The fall back position for the disciples of greed (should Carnegie and his modern counterparts prove convincing to the masses) is the moral argument: that wealth belongs to those who have it, and nobody has any right to take it away, for any reason. The wealth the rich possess is proof enough of their entitlement. The argument is persuasive. If we were rich, would we want to be punished for it? Then Huntington's famous quote reminds us that the plutocrat's concept of ownership is a little different from most peoples.'
Whether or not we have a moral right to free rich people from their greed, the world is in serious economic trouble. Getting more money into circulation has been proven to relieve hard times. Money nowadays is concentrated in the hands of an extremely small group of people, who refuse to circulate it. Since America is still structurally a democracy, do the people have the right to use democratic measures to use this money to improve the general welfare? We need the money. Have we the right to "pry it loose?"