DEAR MR. PRESIDENT,
I HAVE THE HIGH HONOR AND DISTINCT PRIVILEGE of writing to you on behalf of millions of leading entrepreneurs, small business owners, salespeople, and executives whose creativity, work ethic, and personal responsibility make up the backbone of the American economic engine and therefore keep the American Dream alive.
These individuals have become highly paid because they are highly productive. For some reason, however, you do not refer to these Americans as “working people”—you typically call them “the rich.” But with all due respect Mr. President, they work indeed, often putting in sixty, seventy, and even eighty hour weeks in order to satisfy their customers and expand their businesses.
These are the most successful Americans who create vast numbers of jobs. And yet, contrary to your campaign promises of “hope” for all Americans, you have singled them out for condemnation and expropriation. You say we need to spread their wealth around in the interests of fairness. You vow to make them pay higher taxes, even though they already pay far more than anyone else. You bury their businesses in a morass of red-tape and useless regulation. You attempt to make the government—instead of their customers—the arbiter of their success.
Mr. President, I am writing to ask that you STOP THE WAR ON SUCCESS!
I have been working with entrepreneurs and small business owners and their families for nearly twenty years. The picture you paint of the free market, the business world, and successful business owners is totally foreign to me. You speak of successful Americans as if they’re all corrupt corporate CEOs. Do you not understand that many of the very people you denounce are small businessmen and businesswomen who earned their own wealth?
You speak of a rich man as selfish, but do you see the jobs he has created? You speak of him as having more than he needs, but did you see how little he had when he accepted the risk of starting his own business? You speak of luck, but did you see the years of misfortune that preceded his success? You speak of him as “privileged,” but have you heard that fewer than 20 percent of rich Americans inherited their wealth?
I have seen firsthand that these individuals have unbelievable work ethics and the highest integrity. Imaginative and innovative, they create jobs out of thin air. They treat their employees like family. They are compassionate and giving and donate a greater percentage of their income to churches and charities than public records reveal most of our elected officials do, including you and your vice president. Many have failed repeatedly, and yet they get back up and take another shot at excellence.
Mr. President, I do not know what it’s like to be a community organizer. I have no firsthand experience so I will keep my mouth shut and my pen silent on such matters. It is impossible to expect you, as president, to remain equally quiet about business matters. But perhaps your utter lack of experience in this realm should be cause for some humility. You have not taken the risks of starting and growing your own business or participating in the free marketplace at all. You do not understand what business really is; it is certainly not what you present it to be.
One can fairly ask why your commitment to spreading the wealth around only applies to business—and not to politics. For example, shouldn’t it apply to your position of President of the United States? By achieving this position, you have attained disproportionate status and power in your field. In politics, you are the “super-rich.” So shouldn’t you spread your political wealth around to those who have not been as fortunate as you? Doesn’t your enthusiasm for “redistributive justice” mean some of your enormous power should be taken from you and given to others who have less power?
This, no doubt, will sound ludicrous to you, as you worked hard for many years to get where you are today. Why should you have to give away the fruits of your own success? In your mind, it is only the entrepreneur whose success should be expropriated and spread around. The politically powerful, like yourself, are mysteriously exempt from the demands of equality.
Finally Mr. President, consider the message you are sending to America’s young people. I truly believe our greatest generations are still to come, but it will never happen if our children believe the messages transmitted by your rhetoric and policies: that no one can succeed on their own, that business is fundamentally dishonorable and dishonest, that only the government can save us from the depredations of businessmen and businesswomen, and that anyone who is financially successful is a societal parasite.
The entrepreneurial class you demonize is largely responsible for America’s high standard of living and its unprecedented pace of technological innovation. Think about the consequences of your relentless attack on these people and everything they represent—success, prosperity, upward mobility, and self-sufficiency. Whether through your rhetoric of class warfare or through your policies of expropriation and redistribution, you are undermining this vital group of Americans. America may indeed become more equal without these entrepreneurs, but it will be the equality of poverty and mediocrity, of underachievement and apathy.
And now I ask you, Mr. President: where’s the hope in that?
