Winners and Losers

I'm in Washington DC on business. My hotel provides free copies of The Wall Street Journal. Yesterday's front page story was based on an interview with Barack Obama:

FLINT, Mich. -- Sen. Barack Obama shed new light on his economic plans for the country, saying he would rely on a heavy dose of government spending to spur growth, use the tax code to narrow the widening gap between winners and losers in the U.S. economy, and possibly back a reduction in corporate tax rates.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, the Illinois Democrat said that he was trying to put together tax and spending policies that dealt with two challenges. One is the competition from rapidly growing developing countries, like India and China. The other: the U.S. becoming what he called a "winner-take-all" economy, where the gains from economic growth skew heavily toward the wealthy.

Sen. Obama cited new economic forces to explain what appears like a return to an older-style big-government Democratic platform skeptical of market forces. "Globalization and technology and automation all weaken the position of workers," he said, and a strong government hand is needed to assure that wealth is distributed more equitably. He spoke aboard his campaign bus, where a big-screen TV was tuned to the final holes of the U.S. Open golf tournament.

Augh! The man is appealing to one of the deadly seven sins: Envy. He wants poor people to vote for him because he is willing to use the coercive power of the state to stop wealthy people from getting more wealthy.

I much prefer Dave Ramsey's analysis. He says, in essence:

Yes, the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer. That's because the rich keep doing what got them rich, and the poor keep doing what got them poor.

The State can only narrow the divide between rich and poor by making the rich poorer. Individual poor people can narrow the divide between rich and poor by acting more like rich people. And it's no secret how to do that.

How do you keep from getting poorer? It's simple, really, as Andrew Klavan writes in City Journal:

Beating poverty in America nowadays is largely a matter of personal behavior. Get a high school diploma, don’t have kids until you’re married, don’t get married until you’re 21, and you probably won’t be poor. It also helps if you work hard, show up on time, act courteously, and avoid anything felonious.

Or read what Bill Cosby said to the NAACP in 2004:

I heard a prize fight manager say to his fellow who was losing badly, “David, listen to me. It’s not what’s he’s doing to you. It’s what you’re not doing."

....

Now, look, I’m telling you. It’s not what they’re doing to us. It’s what we’re not doing. 50 percent drop out. Look, we’re raising our own ingrown immigrants. These people are fighting hard to be ignorant. There’s no English being spoken, and they’re walking and they’re angry. Oh God, they’re angry and they have pistols and they shoot and they do stupid things. And after they kill somebody, they don’t have a plan. Just murder somebody. Boom. Over what? A pizza?

The United States president does not have the power to make poor people richer. Working through Congress he might be able to make rich people poorer. That's not the country I want. That's not something I hope for. That's definitely not the change I hope to see.