No, the Rich Don’t Deserve Their Wealth
Capitalism is built on the meritocratic idea that everyone gets what they deserve in the marketplace. This May Day, let’s reject that idea — wealth creation is a fundamentally social process, and the rich have no right to hoard all the resources and power.
Cartoon of Andrew Carnegie, 1900. (Udo J. Keppler / Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons)
A foundational belief in capitalist societies is the notion that individuals deserve the income they receive in the market: your bank account reflects your talent and efforts and is therefore rightly yours, and yours alone.
A recent survey found that 66 percent of Republicans believe the rich are rich because they “worked harder” than other people, not because of other advantages in life. As the late conservative activist Herman Cain put it, “Don’t blame Wall Street. Don’t blame the big banks. If you don’t have a job and you’re not rich, blame yourself.”
Hence Bill Gates and Elon Musk truly deserve their mountains of wealth ($110 billion and $190 billion, respectively), whereas disabled people supposedly deserve their paltry earnings of only $25,000 on average per year. Such ideas of deservingness and merit are the mortar between the bricks of our society’s foundation.
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