Capitalist societies benefit from rich people

The “Progressive” aversion to rich people (at least, rich people in the abstract, since so many prominent Progressives are filthy rich) is a hangover from a non-capitalist time, when wealth was class-based.  In America, with a free, capitalistic system, wealth is, at least in theory, available to all people.  Historic evidence indicates that, assuming people aren’t destroyed by generations of welfare, even if one generation doesn’t ascend the American wealth ladder, the next one will.  I mention all of this because of John Goodman’s penetrating article explaining precisely why wealthy people are good for all American people.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, whether one is talking about the rich or abortions or dealing with our enemies, the Progressives are rooted in the past.  They live in a time and place in which there is no birth control and illegitimacy is a sin; where society is so stratified that the poor are virtual serfs while the rich are a hereditary aristocracy; and where the enemy is just like us, only misunderstood.  (Okay, that last isn’t another time or place, it’s a fantasy.)