“The idea is not to fight over the national pie (the GNP) but to grow the pie with market-oriented economic policies that generates social mobility.” – Tweet by Daniel Garza, Executive Director of the LIBRE Initiative
When we have a celebration or a family get-together and more people attend than we thought were coming, do we expect that the guests (both expected and unexpected) eat less and drink less? No, of course, we don’t! What we do is we prepare (or buy) more food and drink.
Why is it then that those who would not skimp on getting more food and drink, to satisfy their family and friends, have such a hard time with the concept of working to create a larger economic pie instead of merely dividing up the existing supply of wealth and money in a ‘more equitable manner’?! Why is it that they don’t take the lessons from every day life and champion an economic policy which allows for the creation of more wealth and money? Money and wealth which would be available to those who are willing to work for it and be able to experience the social mobility that is the hallmark of our country back to its British colonial days.
The names that would be part of the list of those who have come from nothing to the top of their professions or have made personal fortunes starting with little or nothing reads like a virtual Who’s Who of America! Benjamin Franklin, John Hancock, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Samuel Clemens(aka Mark Twain), John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Joseph Pulitzer, Howard Hughes, Dwight David Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Jennifer Lopez, Martha Stewart, Russell Simmons, Emilio and Gloria Estefan, and Oprah Winfrey are but a few examples.
These people and many, many more like them did not get their wealth or achieve their position in American society by looking to take from others but by working to create more economic pie to share, by following their American Dreams.
Ironically, it is this striving for the American Dream, the idea of working hard, getting ahead, and making life better for those who come after you, that draws hundreds of thousands to our shores every year, both through legal immigration and through immigration classified as illegal or undocumented. It is almost comical that those who would fight to the death for immigration reform so that the undocumented can remain here and become citizens are very often the same people who disparage the reason that these foreign nationals want to come here. It is comical that these people are serious critics of the work of groups such as the LIBRE Initiative whose Executive Director provided the tweet which inspired this article and who has received unfair criticism from many people in the Latino community including other writers on this website.
By Being Latino Contributor, Jeffery Cassity Jeffery Cassity is a mostly socially-liberal, fiscally-conservative Anglo male who is involved in his local Hispanic community as the widower of a 1st generation Mexican-American woman and his active, some would say hyperactive, membership in the local Council of the League of Latin American