Wednesday, April 21, 2010

I Love Money

I'm admitting it. I am saying it. I refuse to add a caveat or a qualifier. I refuse to refer to St. Augustine or any country song written by a comfortable artist and sung by a rich person.

I like money. Actually I love having money when I have a little of it. I wish I had it. I know it would make my life and the lives of those closest to me a lot better.

One of the best events in life is getting your first paycheck. For most of us, it was probably something like a hundred bucks or so. It represented a sacrifice of time and energy spent earning money. As you work hard and move ahead in life you see that pay day get better andbetter, hopefully. You see it grow even larger as you achieve in your job or graduate from college. Making money off of investments makes a person feel good too. You risked money in a viable enterprise, helping it and yourself if the investment succeeded.

Money is great. It feels great to have a nice thick stack of bills in your wallet. You can take your kids on trips that broaden their mind, you can fix up your house or, hey, buy a new one. Money and property liberate the mind, body, and soul. Obviously that liberation can go in positive or negative directions. But it's your money, you can do what you want, enjoy the benefits, or reap the consequences. I want to have as much of it as I can possibly earn. I refuse to allow myself to be socially badgered into thinking that is a bad thing. If I had a lot of money, I'd put more money into the collection plate at church, into the Salvation Army buckets, and leave giant tips. Best of all I would invest it into the private sector, helping to create jobs and economic expansion. I'd also spend a good bit too.

Investing and spending generate more wealth. It's the capitalist system and it has done a very good job of creating massive amounts of wealth in the United States. It's that wealth that Obama and the Left want to seize so they can run their unnecessary programs. Wealth liberates and taxes control. They want your money and your liberty.

The fact is that such statements sound shocking. We have been conditioned to think of money as a necessary evil, a corrupting influence, and a signpost on the road to perdition. We've been trained to always add some moral caveat every time we say we want money or like it. I'm tired of that. Money is a good thing. For every lottery winner or sports star that ends up worse off, there are many whose lives improve because of it. Country music usually hits the nail on the head, but I cringe every time I hear a millionaire singing that he or she just wants to live in a little house in the sticks and drive a car that breaks down all the time.

Left wingers love to bash money and bash businessmen that earn it, even when they are rich themselves. They want to raise taxes that siphon away that money because they think they can spend it better than you can. Part of their strategy is to demonize money itself and make people feel shame for having it even when they work hard for it. Don't give in to that kind of mindset because it is the road to serfdom, if not downright slavery.

And it is not greed to want to keep your money. If the money was earned by someone, somewhere properly, it is not greed to want to keep it. Greed is when you believe that you are entitled to resources that you did not earn or own. It is not the rich man who holds onto his cash that is greedy, it is the government that comes to take it so it can fund pointless programs. The government is greedy, not the owner of wealth or property.

Be proud of the money you earned and fight for your right to keep it. Because money, after all, is potentially a very good thing.

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