Class Warfare?

The next time you hear about how "the rich" don't "pay their fair share" or how they need to pay more in taxes, please consider the following;

Here are some reasons I'm glad some of you here in America are "rich;"

1. You provide me and my employees with work. I am in the dry cleaning business and you buy clothes that require my services. You are busy working, earning a living and require my delivery services. I and my employees appreciate that you need us.

2. You buy goods and services that keep other people busy at work and they also need my services, again providing us with work and an income.

3. You buy expensive products. I am grateful to you for buying things like plasma tv's when they were $10,000 and personal computers when they were thousands more than they are now. Your purchases at higher prices allowed the manufacturers to improve technology and production so that now, many of the rest of us can afford the same products at a fraction of the cost you paid.

4. You buy cars (and maintain them) when they are brand new that years later, I can afford. It may sound silly, but because you bought that Cadillac years ago and maintained it well, I was able to buy a luxury car in great condition and with low mileage that I would have never been able to consider if I'd had to buy it new.

5. You are willing to spend your hard-earned dollars on medical procedures that later become affordable to the rest of us. Thanks to you, I could afford Lasik surgery that prevented me from spending hundreds of dollars a year on bi-focals (and possibly tri-focals later).

6. You pay much more than me in taxes. Because of the taxes you pay on all of your purchases and property, it reduces my liability. I don't mean I wish you to pay more (on a percentage basis) than I do, but I realize that if we both paid 20% income taxes, you'd pay more than me and I am grateful to you for that.

7. When my church has big-ticket repairs/improvements needed, you often step up to help out. This helps ease the burden on the rest of us that may not have the resources to pay for the repairs/improvements.

I could continue with many other reasons to thank the so-called rich. There will always be those better-off than me and some less-fortunate. We should be willing to offer a helping hand to the less-fortunate while not begrudging the more-fortunate.