To the Editor:

We continually hear the myth about how the rich are greedy, but what we don’t hear is how greedy a high school dropout can be or the union workers who want more money or even those on welfare who want more benefits. In reality, they are all driven by greed.

Our rich buy and build all those things that provide jobs. The rich invest their money, which allows industry and manufacturing to grow. Confiscate more money from the rich and it goes into a government hopper where it inevitably disappears in wasteful and massive government bureaucracies. Government does not create jobs, only a free market does.

And the rich don’t keep their money under a mattress; they invest it to help our country grow.

Borrowing from an article by Michael Shermer in Scientific American who makes the point, confirmed by the federal government and economists, that the pie we all take a portion from is actually a much larger pie, so the relative size of our portion has actually grown.

For example, a report by the Federal Reserve showed that during 2013 the net worth of American households actually grew 14 percent with an increase of $10 trillion to an astounding $80.7 trillion; one huge pie indeed.

President Obama’s comments about lack of economic mobility were incorrect because in fact during the period between 1987 and 2005 almost half of the public moved into a higher income tax bracket.  However, of those in the top income tax brackets, almost 60 percent moved into a lower tax bracket.

We are faced with a number of other myths and one is that the rich are extremely rich, but when this myth was examined it was found that while most believed the rich had annual incomes of $2 million, it was found that the rich have incomes of only $169,000.

All in all, the American dream is still alive and we are doing quite well thank you, regardless of the envy we hear from people who quit high school and blame the rich. While we do have our share of poverty and we certainly need to help those who cannot help themselves, the vast majority of those so-called poverty-stricken people still manage to own a huge flat screen television and expensive cell phones.

In final analysis, the liberal view of taking from the rich to give to the poor only results in destroying the work ethic of many who then become dependent, while those with political connections just get fatter off the backs of the workers. Remember when Hillary Clinton complained that they were flat broke when Bill left office, having only $12 million income?

The people who we really need to be worrying about now are the retired folks who built this country and worked hard to put money away for their retirement but now see their savings wiped out by inflation. With every minimum wage increase, we have another round of inflation.

Bob Wilson

Franklin