Three Cheers for Wealth Creation

Forget all the brainless socialist rhetoric and nonsense:

Most folks in the West today are woefully ignorant about most important topics. They will opine and emote over all sorts of issues, all the while remaining frightfully ignorant about what they are talking about. Expressing outrage and presenting a laundry list of grievances is always easier than actually knowing the facts about a given issue.

This is certainly true when it comes to economics. There are plenty of armchair experts carrying on about this matter while often being quite unaware of some core basic economic truths and realities. And one such truth is this: before wealth can be shared, it must first be created.

The free market is all about wealth creation, and it is the only economic system to lift millions of people out of grinding poverty. Yet the loony left keeps running with the same old ‘capitalism is evil’ mantra and keep insisting that communism and socialism is the only way to go here.

Of course they cannot offer even one example in human history of communism actually helping anyone – except the tiny set of leaders at the top. Everyone else lived in miserable poverty and hardship. So before we hop on the socialist bandwagon, we need to know something about history – and about economics.

Thomas Sowell is one renowned economist who happens to be Black, and who used to be a Marxist. Anyone wanting an invaluable education in economics will be well-placed to get their hands on his many dozens of vitally important books.

Let me mention just one of them here. Basic Economics was first published in 2000. It is now in its fifth edition (Basic Books, 2014). I have the fourth edition of 2011. In the Preface he says this:

Most of us are necessarily ignorant of many complex fields, from botany to brain surgery. As a result, we simply do not attempt to operate in, or comment on, those fields. However, every voter and every politician that they vote for affects economic policies. We cannot opt out of economic issues and decisions. Our only options are to be informed, uninformed, or misinformed, when making our choices on issues and candidates. Basic Economics is intended to make it easier to be informed. The fundamental principles of economics are not hard to understand, but they are easy to forget, especially amid the heady rhetoric of politics and the media.

The matter of wealth creation is of course discussed in this book, and in many of his other volumes. One essay from 2006 (later published in several of his books) is titled, “The Cure for Poverty? Wealth”. Sowell says this in part:

People on the political left make a lot of noise about poverty and advocate all sorts of programs and policies to reduce it, but they show incredibly little interest in how poverty has actually been reduced …

 

Since wealth is the only thing that can cure poverty, you might think that the left would be as obsessed with the creation of wealth as it is with the redistribution of wealth. But you would be wrong. When it comes to lifting people out of poverty, redistribution of income has a much poorer track record than the creation of wealth. In some places, such as Zimbabwe today, attempts at a redistribution of wealth have turned out to be a redistribution of poverty.

 

While the creation of wealth may be more effective for enabling millions of people to rise out of poverty, it provides no special role for the political left, no puffed-up importance, no moral superiority. Redistribution is clearly better for the left. Leftist emphasis on “the poor” proceeds as if the poor were some separate group.

 

But, in most Western countries, at least, millions of people who are “poor” at one period of their lives are “rich” at another—as these terms are conventionally defined. How can that be? People tend to become more productive—create more wealth—over time, with more experience and an accumulation of skills and training.

 

That is reflected in incomes that are two or three times higher in later years than at the beginning of a career. But that, too, is of little or no interest to the political left. Ultimately, the left is about the left, not about the people it claims to want to lift out of poverty. https://www.hoover.org/research/cure-poverty-wealth  

From the general to the particular

I recently penned a piece discussing the work of the famous economist F. A. Hayek. I quoted from him as he spoke to the matter of equality and social justice. As expected, various commentators from the left replied. Some were just obvious trolls whose bad case of TDS was all too apparent. But I did let one comment go through. It was this:

It is often said that a rising tide lifts all boats, but the reality today is that only the superyachts of billionaires rise while rowboats sink. A good illustration of this is Elon Musk “earning” an obscene trillion dollar remuneration package while the lowest paid Americans get the minimum wage of $7 an hour or less. Pointing out unfairness and inequality does not mean advocacy of equal wages for everyone. Surely a just society can do better than this and ensure that each member of a wealthy society can at least live above the poverty line. Accepting the current system is a recipe for civil unrest and ensuing disaster.

What would Jesus do?

I replied to him as follows:

Thanks, but did you actually read my piece? Or any of the other 250 articles I did on economics, wealth and poverty? You might need to learn some basic economic facts, instead of just parroting tired leftist talking points.

 

Here are a few facts (and questions) for you:

-The top 1% of Americans pay over 40% of all federal income taxes – how much tax do you pay?

-The top 10% of Americans pay over 70% of all federal income taxes – how much tax do you pay?

-The top 50% of Americans pay 97% of all federal income taxes – how much tax do you pay?

-The bottom 50% of Americans pay just 3% of all federal income taxes – how much tax do you pay?

-Musk pays plenty in taxes. As Black economist Thomas Sowell rightly asks: “Since this is an era when many people are concerned about ‘fairness’ and ‘social justice,’ what is your ‘fair share’ of what someone else has worked for?” 

-Musk has created numerous businesses – how many new businesses have you created?

-Musk has created tens of thousands of new jobs – how many new jobs have you created?

-Musk directly or indirectly employs nearly a million workers – how many do you employ?

-Musk is at the forefront of so many technologies, be it Tesla, Starlink, etc, that benefit millions of people – how many technologies have you created?

-It was Tesla shareholders who approved his remuneration package. What he does with his money is up to him, and he funds many worthy causes. How many worthy causes do you fund?

-His SpaceX (which he funded, not US taxpayers) rescued stranded astronauts – how many have you rescued?

 

Oh, and one last question: Are you equally concerned about filthy-rich leftists like Bernie Sanders or George Soros or Mark Zuckerberg? Or are you just concerned about rich people if they happen to be conservatives? And many of these leftist millionaires – just like their mentor Karl Marx – never worked a real job in their life.

 

Thinking that Musk is somehow wrong to have wealth is ludicrous. He is actually creating wealth and sharing it around. And we all benefit from this. Wealth cannot be shared until it is first created. The state does not create any wealth – it merely distributes the wealth of hard workers like Musk and gives it to those it chooses to – often creating a culture of dependency.

 

And as I have argued already, a good way to trap people in poverty and joblessness is to push for a minimum wage: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2014/11/18/on-the-minimum-wage/

 

What would Jesus do? We know exactly what he would not do. He would NOT demand that inefficient, impersonal bureaucracies be established to deal with these matters. He told his disciples to personally go out and feed the poor and so on, not the all-powerful State. And for centuries it was the church, community groups, voluntary societies and others that did offer genuine Christian care for the needy, until the state started to supplant their vital role. Just how many poor people are you personally helping?

 

There is a role for governments to play here, as in offering a safety net for the truly deserving – and that already exists in America and the West. But demonising those who have worked all their life and benefited millions of people – including astronauts stranded in space – will not help the situation but simply make matters worse.

 

The only way to help the poor is by wealth creation. I thank God for Musk and others who are doing just that, and I tend to ignore all the armchair critics who sit around whining about such people.

I can report that he did reply to this. But he answered none of my questions and simply resorted to ad hominem attacks. He said I did not know what I was talking about, and he even threw in the charge of me being a climate change denier! I have learned over the years that there is a big difference between argumentative leftist trolls and those who actually want to have a proper discussion.

And it is always interesting when folks invoke the name of Jesus in their remarks. Whether that means they are actually Christians or not is debatable. But since this person did, and since he thinks he is taking the high moral ground here, let me say a few more things about Jesus, economics and Scripture.

A core biblical principle regarding economics is the importance of private property. Indeed, two of the Ten Commandments presuppose this: the one on theft and the one on coveting. As most folks should know, the core of the free market system is private property, while the vision of the socialist/Marxist left is the eradication of private property.

That alone should help Christians decide which side to stand on. But I have written numerous pieces on what the Bible teaches about wealth and poverty. Here are just a few for those wanting to see how Jesus fits into this overall debate:

https://billmuehlenberg.com/2010/09/01/%e2%80%98social-justice%e2%80%99-versus-biblical-justice/

http://billmuehlenberg.com/2015/04/06/markets-and-morality/   

https://billmuehlenberg.com/2015/11/20/the-church-riches-and-responsibility/

https://billmuehlenberg.com/2016/05/30/bible-private-property/

https://billmuehlenberg.com/2018/08/14/actually-no-jesus-was-not-a-socialist/

https://billmuehlenberg.com/2025/10/05/genuine-christian-concern-and-charity/

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