The rest of society should be alarmed when a politician speaks ill of 'the rich'

There are various ways to craft a political speech. The noblest of all is to appeal to reason with criteria of truth and justice.

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Personally, I have always admired those politicians who do not fall into demagoguery, politicians who are capable of taking on the sometimes difficult challenge of assuming unpopular but necessary positions, politicians who have the courage to address their public not by telling them everything they want to hear, but above all what they need to hear.

Perhaps the very logic of democracy favors this type of politician. After all, many of them find themselves having to convince a public that often prefers flattery to complex explanations. In today's world, there are notable exceptions. For example, in Argentina, Javier Milei had everything stacked against him in defending positions contrary to an elephantine state in a country that had spent decades listening to peronist, that is, socialist, rhetoric. But he ultimately succeeded because he was able to make people understand the need to prevent the state from devouring society —a people who, until then, had believed in the state from the perspective of absolute dependence.

When assessing the success of socialist theories in many countries, one fact must be acknowledged: the left has been very successful in propagating the "class struggle", that Marxist theory which consists of dividing society into "good" (the poor) and "bad" (the rich), fomenting envy so that ultimately some political charlatans come to power and ruin the whole of society.

In that speech, the left never appealed to reason, truth, or justice: it appealed to the basest passions. The left appealed to hatred and envy against a social class with the same effectiveness with which the nazis appealed to hatred and envy against the Jews. A serious and honest politician knows that there are no magic or easy solutions to difficult problems. An unscrupulous politician prefers to find scapegoats to blame for all the problems. That option has always proven to be an easy shortcut to gaining the favor of many people who don't understand how wealth is created and, with it, employment and prosperity for all.

I am a middle-class person. I work as a freelancer and have always tried to save for whatever might happen in the future. Honestly, I don't feel any envy or resentment towards the rich, because creating wealth often involves something many forget: taking serious risks. It comforts me to know that there are people who take the risk of investing their money to generate wealth and employment, because by doing so they create a benefit for all of society.

Of course, there are bad people among the rich, just as there are among the poor. There are people who believe that profit is more important than the dignity of workers, and there are also workers who believe it's legitimate to sabotage their company by putting in minimal effort or shirking work at every opportunity. However, there are also employers who make many sacrifices for their employees, just as there are many employees who make many sacrifices for their companies.

Many years ago, when I was studying philosophy in high school, I was warned against generalizations because of how unfair they are. It's just as false to say that a businessman is a greedy and unscrupulous millionaire as it is to say that workers are lazy and resentful. Society is full of all kinds of people, and they should be judged by their actions, not their social class. I think that's not very difficult to understand.

When a politician speaks ill of "the rich," they are making a generalization, that is, committing an injustice. This is often done to foment envy and to access a crude shortcut to power. Some people justify everything in the name of political strategy, but it's important to remember that the end does not justify the means. Fostering envy in a society contributes to its ethical and moral degradation. Furthermore, doing so to gain an advantage over rivals often indicates a very dangerous attitude in politics: that of those who believe anything goes.

Socialism and communism have already shown us the consequences of such appeals to envy. They generally serve to universalize poverty and ensure that the only truly wealthy individuals are the members of the socialist or communist elite, at the expense of plunging the rest of the population into misery and oppression. Therefore, when a politician speaks ill of "the rich," the rest of society should be alarmed, because behind this demagoguery, behind this targeting of scapegoats, what the left often hides is a lack of scruples in its political practices, which usually has disastrous consequences for everyone. And of course, what applies to the left also applies to the center and the right, because no politician is immune to falling into this temptation.

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