{"id":937027,"date":"2021-10-29T11:44:33","date_gmt":"2021-10-29T15:44:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=937027"},"modified":"2021-10-29T11:44:36","modified_gmt":"2021-10-29T15:44:36","slug":"the-one-dead-giveaway-that-somebody-is-absolutely-clueless-about-economics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-one-dead-giveaway-that-somebody-is-absolutely-clueless-about-economics\/","title":{"rendered":"The One Dead Giveaway That Somebody Is Absolutely Clueless About Economics"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthe-one-dead-giveaway-that-somebody-is-absolutely-clueless-about-economics%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=937027&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The comedian Bill Engvall, who <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsnationnow.com\/entertainment-news\/comedian-bill-engvall-explains-why-hes-retiring-from-the-road\/\">announced<\/a> he\u2019s retiring from comedy this year, made a career by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=p5ZkdHImCuQ\">saying<\/a> that stupid people \u201cshould have to wear signs that just say, \u2018I\u2019m stupid.\u2019 That way you wouldn\u2019t rely on them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the complicated world of economics, there is a similar sign you can look for that will instantly tell you the author has no idea what he or she is talking about. It\u2019s a simple turn of phrase which, once you\u2019ve seen it, you\u2019ll never be able to unsee; you will always know the author has no comprehension of his chosen topic.<\/p>\n<p>Here are a few examples. Let\u2019s see if you can find the common thread:<\/p>\n<p>During a debate in 2019, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/politics\/2020-election\/read-democratic-debate-transcript-november-20-2019-n1088186\">said<\/a>&nbsp;that Democrats \u201chave to have an agenda that brings our people together so that the wealth and income doesn\u2019t just go to the people on top but to all of us\u201d;Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/aoc\/status\/957016553232457730\">tweeted<\/a> in 2018, \u201cThere are enough gains in this country for us all to live well. The problem is when 86% of wealth goes to the top 1% of people\u201d;NPR <a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2019\/09\/10\/759512938\/u-s-census-bureau-reports-poverty-rate-down-but-millions-still-poor\">reported<\/a> in 2019, \u201cThe top 20 percent of households received more than half of all income\u201d;The Associated Press <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/donald-trump-us-news-ap-top-news-politics-longest-recovery-df1ca4016d27405791c10eb5772c06a4\">reported<\/a> that, while household wealth \u201cjumped 80% in the past decade[, m]ore than one-third of that gain \u2014 $16.2 trillion in riches \u2014 went to the wealthiest 1%, figures from the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.federalreserve.gov\/releases\/efa\/efa-distributional-financial-accounts.htm\">Federal Reserve<\/a>&nbsp;show. Just 25% of it went to middle-to-upper-middle class households\u201d;In 2018, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran a story <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jsonline.com\/story\/money\/business\/2018\/11\/23\/intense-wealth-concentration-raises-questions-capitalism\/2090764002\/\">titled<\/a>, \u201cMassive wealth flowing to relatively small number of individuals, businesses\u201d;The Washington Post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/us-policy\/2021\/10\/26\/billioniare-tax-dems-biden\/\">reported<\/a> earlier this week, \u201cThe top five billionaires saw their wealth increase 82 percent since the pandemic began, adding $370 billion since the<a href=\"https:\/\/fred.stlouisfed.org\/graph\/?g=Id3X\">S&amp;P 500\u2032s pre-pandemic peak<\/a>&nbsp;in February 2020, according to calculations based on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index\u201d; andIn March, Bloomberg News <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2021-03-22\/the-wealth-gains-that-made-2020-a-banner-year-for-the-richest-1\">told<\/a> its readers: \u201cThe richest 1% of households saw their net worth rise by some $4 trillion in 2020, meaning that they captured about 35% of the extra wealth generated nationwide \u2026 The poorest half of the population, by contrast, got about 4% of overall gains.\u201d<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Blaming immigrants for lack of prosperity is a tired \u2013 and incorrect \u2013 argument.<\/p>\n<p>There are enough gains in this country for us all to live well. The problem is when 86% of wealth goes to the top 1% of people.<\/p>\n<p>In a world without immigrants, we would be in even greater crisis.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The comedian Bill Engvall, who announced he\u2019s retiring from comedy this year, made a career by saying that stupid people \u201cshould have to wear signs that just say, \u2018I\u2019m stupid.\u2019 That way you wouldn\u2019t rely on them.\u201dIn the complicated world of economics, there is a similar sign you can look for that will instantly tell you the author has no idea what he or she is talking about. It\u2019s a simple turn of phrase which, once you\u2019ve seen it, you\u2019ll never be able to unsee; you will always know the author has no comprehension of his chosen topic.Here are a few examples. Let\u2019s see if you can find the common thread:During a debate in 2019, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) said\u00a0that Democrats \u201chave to have an agenda that brings our people together so that the wealth and income doesn\u2019t just go to the people on top but to all of us\u201d;Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) tweeted in 2018, \u201cThere are enough gains in this country for us all to live well. The problem is when 86% of wealth goes to the top 1% of people\u201d;NPR reported in 2019, \u201cThe top 20 percent of households received more than half of all income\u201d;The Associated Press reported that, while household wealth \u201cjumped 80% in the past decade[, m]ore than one-third of that gain \u2014 $16.2 trillion in riches \u2014 went to the wealthiest 1%, figures from the Federal Reserve\u00a0show. Just 25% of it went to middle-to-upper-middle class households\u201d;In 2018, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran a story titled, \u201cMassive wealth flowing to relatively small number of individuals, businesses\u201d;The Washington Post reported earlier this week, \u201cThe top five billionaires saw their wealth increase 82 percent since the pandemic began, adding $370 billion since theS&#038;P 500\u2032s pre-pandemic peak\u00a0in February 2020, according to calculations based on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index\u201d; andIn March, Bloomberg News told its readers: \u201cThe richest 1% of households saw their net worth rise by some $4 trillion in 2020, meaning that they captured about 35% of the extra wealth generated nationwide \u2026 The poorest half of the population, by contrast, got about 4% of overall gains.\u201dBlaming immigrants for lack of prosperity is a tired \u2013 and incorrect \u2013 argument.There are enough gains in this country for us all to live well. The problem is when 86% of wealth goes to the top 1% of people.In a world without immigrants, we would be in even greater crisis.\u2014 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 26, 2018What do all of those examples have in common? They all use passive verbs. In their telling, wealth simply \u201cgoes to\u201d certain people; those people passively \u201csaw\u201d their incomes increase. Wealth just \u201cflows\u201d to certain people. That kind of language betrays their deep-seated ignorance of how wealth is created. It\u2019s true that someone who uses passive language about wealth creation may own a large body of facts; he may know many figures and statistics about specific industries. But it\u2019s the equivalent of someone identifying many trees without seeing the forest.In their minds, wealth just happens. Their understanding of the economy is no more sophisticated than picturing heaps of money sitting on a table, waiting to be scooped up (or \u201ccaptured\u201d) and handed out to people like sides of mixed fruit in a school lunch. Senator Huey \u201cKingfish\u201d Long (D-LA), who proposed to end the Great Depression with a national program to \u201cShare Our Wealth,\u201d (our?) once\u00a0used that very analogy:How many men ever went to a barbecue and would let one man take off the table what\u2019s intended for nine-tenths of the people to eat? The only way you\u2019ll be able to feed the balance of the people is to make that man come back and bring back some of that grub that he ain\u2019t got no business with!\u00a0People on the Left spend an inordinate amount of time and concern talking about wealth distribution but give almost no thought to wealth creation. That\u2019s why it\u2019s imperative to understand: Abundance doesn\u2019t occur naturally. Wealth creation is a deliberate process of planning, creativity, innovation, investment, effort, marketing \u2014 and often prayer \u2014 that involves a vast amount of work from people who may never know one another\u2019s names. The process begins when an entrepreneur comes up with an idea for a new good or service that he knows people need; he gets (or borrows) enough capital to finance his business, buys the equipment, hires workers, advertises to the public, and hopes that consumers agree he has invented a must-have product. As we are learning, every step in the complex supply chain requires the work of multiple industries working in harmony to create a prosperous market.Put another way, wealth is produced by human action.Contrary to the common stereotype of \u201cinherited wealth,\u201d only 8.5% of Americans with a net worth of at least $30 million inherited all their money. But 68% of America\u2019s wealthiest people earned their wealth on their own, often coming from humble origins.In fact, the amount of work performed is one of the greatest differences between the richest and the poorest Americans. Harvard Business Review noted in 2006 that \u201c62% of high-earning individuals work more than 50 hours a week, 35% work more than 60 hours a week, and 10% work more than 80 hours a week. Add in a typical one-hour commute, and a 60-hour workweek translates into leaving the house at 7 am and getting home at 9 pm five days a week.\u201d It is unlikely the workweek has decreased after the Great Recession and the global pandemic.Work increases on every step up the ladder of success \u2014 and decreased every rung down. As Mark J. Perry of AEI reported:More than four times as many top quintile households included at least one adult who was working full-time in 2017 (77.4%) compared to the bottom income quintile (only 18.4%), and five times as many households in the bottom quintile included adults who did not work at all (68.5%) compared to top quintile households whose family members did not work (13.2%). The share of householders working full-time increases at each higher income quintile (18.4% to 47.1% to 61.2% to 71.0% to 77.4%).The fact that so much of wealth creation depends on work explains why there is so much social mobility in the United States \u2014 upwards and downwards. \u201c28 percent of the children of parents in the top [20%] of the residual wealth distribution will end up in the bottom two [fifths], and 28 percent of the children of parents in the bottom quintile of the residual wealth distribution will end up in the top two quintiles,\u201d according to a 2016 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Yes, even millionaires are subject to churn. In 2019, there were a record-high 11 million U.S. millionaires; by March 2020, the pandemic had wiped out 500,000 millionaires.What modern-day journalists and reporters don\u2019t understand about wealth, the sages of the past did. A prayer in the modern Roman Catholic Mass, modeled on the Jewish table grace, says, \u201cBlessed are You, Lord God of all creation, for through Your goodness we have received the bread we offer You: fruit of the earth and work of human hands, it will become for us the bread of life.\u201d God gives the resources; the work of human hands transforms and multiplies them, producing wealth.So, when you see anyone implying that this wearying work of wealth creation happens passively, you know he has no clue what he\u2019s talking about.The views expressed in this piece are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a\u00a0member.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-937027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=937027"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/937027\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=937027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=937027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=937027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}