I consider myself an average American. I am a middle class person who has been through the basic ups and downs that all of us go through in a lifetime. I remember 30-cents-a-gallon gasoline and gas lines during the 1970's. I remember price and wage controls and WIN (whip inflation now) and I remember wondering how many people the money taken out of my or my husband's paycheck was supporting, since I never got to spend it. I have noticed that there seem to be some people in this country that are very rich, but my experience when I have met some of these people was that they were very well educated or very hard working and most had made serious personal sacrifices to obtain their wealth. I suppose that is a very naive view, but I really think most rich people who have honestly earned their money have worked very hard for it. I see no reason to hold their success against them or to penalize them in some way by higher taxes or trying to limit the amount of money they can make.
With the above philosophy in mind, I am very troubled by a tape of a speech by former SEIU executive Stephen Lerner from last weekend. On Tuesday, the Business Insider posted an aritlce about Mr. Lerner's plan to "destabilize" the country. Speaking at a closed forum at Pace University in New York last weekend, Mr. Lerner outlined a plan to destroy JP Morgan, nuke the stock market and weaken Wall Street's grip on power, thus creating the conditions necessary for a redistribution of wealth and a change in government.
I have a better idea--why not go out and earn your own money instead of trying to take away other people's? The link above has posted the whole transcript of Mr. Lerner's speech.
Ed Morrissey at Hot Air also posted an article on Tuesday about Mr. Lerner's remarks. Mr. Morrissey concludes:
"I don't think that anyone doubts that labor in this country has become poisonously hostile to private enterprise, thanks in large part to its inability to organize workers outside of the public sector. Its leaders surely share Lerner's hostility to so-called "fat-cat bankers", Wall Street executives, and anyone in general that makes a profit off of their hard work, ingenuity, and investment. But the final questioner in the longer video inadvertently makes the case that unions have just as much invested in the current system as everyone else, thanks to their pension fund investments, and stand to lose just as much if not more than most if the system collapses, whether organically or from a "poor people's movement" attack. That's why Lerner doesn't have access to those big bucks any longer, and why Labor Nihilist Club is going to fall short of its Fight Club fantasies."
Have we reached the point in America where we don't know how to play nicely together?
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