What is the main theme of this election? What is the one thing that people seem to be talking about the most other than the outsiders vs. the Status Quo in government? I think it is making America “Fair” again? Let’s assume that the premise is correct. If so, then one must ask a few questions. First, what is fair across the country? Is penalizing one group more than another fair? Should we penalize someone for not getting a job, because the fact that they don’t work makes the rest of us have to work harder with fewer people carrying the load for supporting government programs that benefit 100% of the citizenry? Should we penalize someone for becoming rich because they lawfully found ways to play the system, and make money more than someone else who did not have the knowledge, effort or wherewithall to do the same thing? In other words, do we even things up for the less smart? Secondly, should we make wealthy people and corporations pay their “fair share?” We have heard that a lot over the years that corporations should have to pay their fair share, and that the wealthy “1% need to pay up” and then we’ll see the government take that money and make the lives of all citizens better. How has that worked so far with the top 5% of earners paying over 75% 0f the taxes in the country. Are we not still practicing deficit spending? Try to remember back to your earliest days when the concept of “fairness” was taught to you at home and in school. Wouldn’t everyone get the same supplies in class to start the first day of school. Didn’t every student have a chance to get an A ? If cupcakes were being handed out in class, (when they could still do that…now it is something far more nutritional like prunes) didn’t everyone get one? The point is that fair was seen as treating each person equally, no matter what their talents or lack of talents might be. The dividing point was when each student was given a test, and the results were different from A to F. If you prepared well for the test and received an A, and the person next to you did not and received an F, there were differences. Were you treated differently? No, but you chose to take the same opportunity and treat it differently? Opportunity was fair, but the effort and preparation were different, thus providing different outcomes. Imagine that repeating itself every day to the point that one student became very successful and took that on into life, while another student chose to continue failing by not doing the prep, and became unsuccessful in life. The question is, “Does the successful person now “owe” something to the unsuccessful person? Should they now “give back” some of their success so that the unsuccessful person will be closer to them; in other words, can we make it fairer? Don’t we already do that? Successful people provide jobs so they can have more success, while providing others with a chance to make money and do the same? Isn’t that giving back? Isn’t that helping your fellow citizens? And when fellow citizens come to work for you and with you, aren’t they entering into a compact or agreement that you are being fair? Otherwise, they wouldn’t work for you, right? They would sign a contract with someone else who would treat them more “fairly” assuming that they were willing to prepare to be qualified for that job. The rub, though, is that if they are not prepared for that job, or opportunity, what is to become of fairness. That is where the third part comes in. The government now becomes the arbiter of “fairness”, the referee if you will, and they decide that they will impose a minimum wage, so that they will guarantee that you will be “fair.” It is an artificial number, not the one that employer and employee agree to in an authentic way, mind you. That is where point four comes into play when the less successful person who has not done their homework as well as the successful person sees that the successful person is making “too much” money and they think this is unfair. Where do they go to get “fairness” imposed? Well, back to the referee of course , the government, who is interested in keeping those people happy enough to keep them voting . Forget that it fosters an attitude of dependence ; it’s just the vote, right? You start to hear about “$15 per hour minimum wage” because government decided that everyone should make $30,000 per year, even though the job that person has decided to stay in isn’t worth $30,000 a year. The government imposes a tax on the successful either in higher capital gains, sin taxes, some kind of “fee”, (which of course is different than a tax…Isn’t the money coming out of the pocket the same color?) or a higher minimum wage. Questions abound here. What if the job isn’t worth $15 an hour? Is the business, especially the small business, able to handle that increase? They are not the government afterall with an endless supply of OUR money. Their treasure is finite, not infinite. And , what about the people already working for you…aren’t you going to also have to raise their pay as well as a reward for continuous service to your company? Wouldn’t that be fair? One must ask , at the end of the day, why businesses exist. Is it to employ people and make sure everyone has a “fair job” with “fair compensation” or is it to make money in a legal way providing the very best quality to a product or service that people want at an acceptable cost to the consumer, and profit margin to the employer while having happy workers. Sorry for the tedious sentence construction, but I think you get the point. Isn’t that the true “fairness” to all concerned? Think about it and let me know…..Gary Sutton
