"Why Thomas Jefferson Favored Profit Sharing"

[applegrove]

Why Thomas Jefferson Favored Profit Sharing

By David Cay Johnston at Newsweek

http://mag.newsweek.com/2014/02/07/why-thomas-jefferson-favored-profit-sharing.html

"SNIP........................................


The founders, despite decades of rancorous disagreements about almost every other aspect of their grand experiment, agreed that America would survive and thrive only if there was widespread ownership of land and businesses.

George Washington, nine months before his inauguration as the first president, predicted that America "will be the most favorable country of any kind in the world for persons of industry and frugality, possessed of moderate capital, to inhabit." And, he continued, "it will not be less advantageous to the happiness of the lowest class of people, because of the equal distribution of property."

The second president, John Adams, feared "monopolies of land" would destroy the nation and that a business aristocracy born of inequality would manipulate voters, creating "a system of subordination to all... The capricious will of one or a very few" dominating the rest. Unless constrained, Adams wrote, "the rich and the proud" would wield economic and political power that "will destroy all the equality and liberty, with the consent and acclamations of the people themselves."

James Madison, the Constitution's main author, described inequality as an evil, saying government should prevent "an immoderate, and especially unmerited, accumulation of riches." He favored "the silent operation of laws which, without violating the rights of property, reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigents towards a state of comfort."





.......................................SNIP"

[Adam051188]

1. hmmmmm says Karl Rove

So now we re-frame the founding fathers as Marxists for the Fox audience, right? and maybe utilize the "times were different" argument for the CNN crowd?

[reusrename]

2. Up until the Red threat in the 1950's, this was called Capitalism.

I sometimes read old dictionaries.

[Egalitarian Thug]

3. +1