I have followed Senator Bernie Sanders on Twitter for a long while now, mostly for humor, but also for information purposes too. It is interesting to follow him and watch as people agree with what he is saying, no matter how ridiculous it is. For the most part I just roll my eyes as he rolls across my feed on Twitter. He really has championed this whole idea of socialism for a long while, at times, looking and preaching full on socialism, and at other times just on the edge. More peculiar to me is that more often than not no one questions why, or even calls him out on it. Sure there are a few brave souls in the Twitter universe that stand up to him, but they are quickly shouted down by the socialism loving anti freedom people. The dichotomy of how he lives and how he preaches is one thing to marvel at for sure.
As someone like me I have always believed to get ahead you have to work hard and prove yourself, out working those around you, seemed to be the best way to show what you can do. I can never remember someone asking me why I was doing it or what made me want to do it. To answer those questions is not difficult but hard to articulate, I just wanted too. In every job I have ever worked one of the first thoughts I had was that I could out work those around me to get promoted and move on. Not because I thought I was better than anyone, I guess, they didn’t want it as bad as I did. Again I cant remember anyone ever asking why. The reason I bring this up is because I keep seeing the great Senator ask why or what is so and so in some big corporation doing, or how they are using their salary. Has anyone asked him how he uses his? Or why he makes as much as he does? Or why does he do what he does? Has anyone asked you?
If you follow Senator Bernie Sanders on Twitter you will know what I mean. But the question I have is who has the right to ask you how you spend your money? Or why you make as much as you do? I guess that may be the wrong question, after all, we all have the freedom to ask any question we want. Is it appropriate, or decent to ask those questions? I mean can you imagine going into a store and asking for the manager, after you find them, ask how are you spending your salary? Presumably the manager makes more than the clerk, or the cashier so why do they make more and what are they doing with what they make? Doesn’t that seem weird, strange, rude, or even wrong?
Is free enterprise free? Are we allowed to work at a business, or start a business and make as much as we can? How much should we make, who decides what salary one should be paid? And then are we to justify what we are making, and to go one step further, as the Senator keeps asking, explain what we are doing with it? Look at it this way, if you visit your neighbors and ask them why they have the house, cars, and things they have would that be appropriate?
Lets tackle a couple of these questions ever so slightly. How is a salary decided upon? Is it decided arbitrarily by one person? By a group of people? Or perhaps, in a board room by a bunch of fancy suit and ties? The real answer here is that it is decided upon by you and I. When you agree to work somewhere you are agreeing to the salary, you might want to make more, but you are agreeing to it. When you get promoted you agree to the terms of that promotion, salary included. If you don’t like the salary you can keep looking until you find a job that has a salary more suited for you. How about a business? Lets say you start a business do you just say to yourself, I am going to pay myself “X” number of dollars? Most likely no. It is decided by your customers, that’s right, you and I are the customers. If I start a business selling widgets and no one wants to buy my widgets then I have no money coming in and therefore cannot pay myself anything. On the other hand if everyone wants to buy my widgets and I have lots of money coming in I can pay myself more. Please understand this principal of economics, the consumer, you and I, decide what can be paid to do a specific job, it is NOT arbitrarily decided upon by anyone.
Does that mean we are free, in free enterprise? Yes!! That is the great part of free enterprise is that the market speaks, the consumer speaks, you and I are speaking and what we are saying is that if a company or person does a great job they can make more money, because their product or service is in demand by you and I. So if a company or person does not do a good job all they have to do is figure out how to have a better product and service that is in demand. How freeing is that?
Back to the main question. Why would one have to justify what they are making, and then justify what they are spending it on? I am not sure. I think the logical answer is they don’t. In fact, they shouldn’t have to at all! What you and I do with our money is our business, just like any other person. Perhaps you are asking yourself now, what about those that make an outrageous amount of money? Before you can ask that question, first we have to determine what is an outrageous amount of money? And we have to determine who gets to define that. Here lies the problem. There will always be someone that makes less money than you do. In fact to a person that makes 25 cents a hour 10 dollars a hour could seem outrageous, don’t you think. Or how about this comparison the average american makes 50 thousand a year, a United States Senator makes 174 thousand a year, that’s outrageous. I wonder why they make so much? And what is Senator Bernie Sanders doing with that much money? The good news here is that in a free enterprise system we don’t need to ask those questions we can just assume that the market is demanding it. Otherwise it would change, all though, I would argue that the United States government is not a free enterprise system, but that is another story.
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