Freedom-Fighters Forum

By Dean Russell

This country may need a good five-cent cigar; but it could better use a hundred or so new millionaires — modern Edisons, Carnegies, Hills, Fords, Wanamakers. We need men of vision who’ll build and produce — not little men who wish to divide and equalize. In this age of the so-called “common man,” we desperately need a few uncommon men.

For the past 60 years, we common men have been increasingly using our majority votes to penalize and hamstring the uncommon men of the market place, the persons who have the ability and ambition to become wealthy by offering the rest of us a desired product or service at an agreeable price. Spurred on by the demagogues who are trying to control us by pretending to take care of us, we’re rejecting the original American idea of rewarding each person according to his merit as determined by the voluntary decisions of consumers who use their own money in a free market economy. Instead, we’re demanding more government ownership and more government controls.

In an attempt to justify this increasing encroachment of government into the market place, we common men claim that no man is worth a million dollars; that when one man has a million, other persons are thereby reduced to poverty. Are these claims valid?

There are only two legitimate ways a man can become a millionaire — by luck or ability. It might be thought that the two are unrelated. But what about this puzzling fact: “Luck” and ability are so frequently found together. For example, were the American Indians just unlucky because they didn’t invent engines and find oil? Why didn’t the natives of Iran and Venezuela become millionaires themselves by developing their own oil? Were they merely unlucky? The discoveries and developments of “lucky” American capitalists have raised living standards for peoples all over the world — and have made millionaires of the “lucky” discoverers and developers.

The collectivistic countries — those following the communist philosophy of “to each according to need” by government authority — also never seem lucky enough to discover much of value to mankind. At best, they’re imitators, not trail blazers. They’re more interested in dividing up the fruits of existing discoveries than in offering an incentive for additional developments. Their policy doubly discourages production: First, high production automatically decreases when the producers know that their higher earnings and profits will be taken from them. Second, low production automatically results when a government promises to give housing, medical care, old-age pensions, and other necessities to all people, whether they have earned them or not.

How about the children and grandchildren lucky enough to be born in a rich family? Since they had no part in accumulating the wealth, should they be permitted to keep it? For that matter, should any person be permitted to keep a gift from any other person? Before deciding, consider this: If, for example, the original Henry Ford had been told that he couldn’t leave his money to his children or to anyone else he wished, he might never have become a millionaire. He might have produced only a few thousand cars instead of many millions of them. He would probably have closed up shop when he made his first half-million dollars. Why should he attempt to earn more than that if he couldn’t do with it as he wished?

That may or may not be called a selfish viewpoint, but it is the philosophy that made the American standard of living the envy of the world. True enough, the biggest factories belonged to millionaires and would-be millionaires. But for the first time in history, the workers who operated the machines produced enough to enjoy a decent standard of living.

It’s doubtless true that a few millionaires were crooks. But since the primary function of government should be to stop skulduggery in general, why didn’t government put the crooked millionaires in jail? Do you suppose the crooked millionaire-gangsters were protected by equally crooked politicians and government officials?

The purpose of government is to protect every person’s life, liberty, and honestly acquired property — even if the property is worth a million dollars. If government performs that one function efficiently, it has done enough.

The honest effort of uncommon men to become millionaires created new sources of wealth. It didn’t cost the the rest of us a penny. On the contrary, the capitalistic millionaires created new jobs and paid high wages to the rest of us. It wasn’t the pampered and glorified common man, but rather the defamed and slandered uncommon man, who put America on top of the world.

Now the collectivists in America are illegalizing the millionaries and dividing their fortunes by the tax route. The collectivists are destroying the traditional American idea of rewarding each person according to his merit as shown in a voluntary society by a free people using their own money. They’re substituting the communist doctrine of “to each according to need” by force of government.

In reality, though, the future prosperity of everyone — including the needy — depends on encouraging persons to become millionaires; to build railroads, houses, and power plants; to develop television, plastics, and new uses for atomic power. The reason is simple: No man in a free country can make a million dollars through the machinery of production without producing something that we common men want at prices we’re willing to pay. And no man will continue to produce something we want at a price we’re willing to pay unless he has the chance to make a profit, to become rich — yes, even to become a millionaire.

That may be economics or greed or just plain human nature. But it’s the dynamo that made the American people the best-fed, best-clothed, best-housed, and most charitable people in history. Why should we now insist on equalizing ourselves down to the standard of living “enjoyed” by the common men in other countries where capitalistic millionaires have been replaced by collectivistic commissars?