The Left Loves and Hates the Poor

Reminder: Our online Zoom conference on open borders continues this Monday evening, November 4, with Don Boudreaux,  former president of The Foundation for Economic Education and current professor of economics at George Mason University.  7 p.m.-8 p.m. Eastern Time.  Register here.

Reminder: I’ll be speaking at the JFK Lancer conference and also at the CAPA conference, which are being held on November 22-24 in Dallas. There is also an excellent third JFK conference on the same weekend sponsored by the JFK Historical Group. All three of them are fantastic JFK-assassination-related conferences. I highly recommend registering for all three and then picking and choosing which sessions you would like to attend at all three conferences. The registration prices are moderate and it’s a great way to support three great conferences. I will have some of my JFK books at my presentations to autograph and sell at a discounted price. I hope to see you all there!

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One of the shibboleths of progressives (i.e., “liberals” or leftists) is that they love the poor. However, the truth is more complex. Actually they only love the poor when they remain poor. If the poor get rich, they then hate them.

Consider, for example, four American multimillionaires from the Gilded Age, which is my favorite period of time in U.S. history: John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, and Leland Stanford.

The left hates them. All four of them are vilified as “robber barons.” However, leftists also love them.

How is that possible?

Well, they hate them because they were rich. But they weren’t always rich. They started out poor. The left loves them when they were poor because leftists love the poor. It was because they got rich that the left began hating them. If they had remained poor instead of becoming rich, leftists would have continued loving them.

Consider Rockefeller. According to his Wikipedia page, he was “one of the wealthiest Americans of all time.” That why the left hates him and vilifies him. But Rockefeller wasn’t always rich. Wikipedia says that he was born to “con artist” William A. Rockefeller, Sr., who “worked first as a lumberman and then a traveling salesman.” John D. Rockefeller’s first job was as an assistant bookkeeper, during which he “worked long hours.”

Consider Carnegie, another one of the richest Americans ever. But he wasn’t always rich. Wikipedia: He was born in Scotland “in a typical weaver’s cottage with only one room. His father had a “successful weaving business and owned multiple looms…. When Carnegie was 12, his father had fa

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