I'm sorry, Mary Anne. I'm beginning to think you have no more idea how business and capitalism works than a fish has about smelting metal.

You don't know what it takes to try and raise money. To try and build facilities, get processes going, try to balance the books, to find the right people. I do. I've helped do it. For multi-million dollar projects.

Most of them fail. And you don't know what that's like either. The layoffs of employees, some that have become friends. Cutting your own salaries and benefits to squeeze another few weeks out and pay employees that aren't as flexible. Closing facilities. Standing there while all your equipment is auctioned off. Sticking another worthless stock certificate in your files.

And then getting back up off the ground to start again. Which is what I'm doing now.

The guy out working on the floor of the factory doesn't do any of this. He walked in the goddam door and signed up to do a job for salary and benefits on a machine someone else built, to make a product someone else designed, in a factory someone else invested in, working for people who have to sweat the blood to make sure it all keeps going. He clocks off at five. The guys running the place don't. If that means he doesn't get quite as much money as the boss, I'm sorry. Is it worth pointing out that this job wouldn't even exist at all except for the entrepreneurs, creators, and investors?

But by God, when you finally make it, and the profits appear, there are plenty of people standing right there ready to take it away. Wealth redistribution to buy political power. And how dare you resent it, when it's society that's given you everything you have!

This is most of business in America. For every multinational you read about in the papers, cutting corners, or paying their CEO ten million dollars, there are a thousand companies you never hear of getting the work done without making headlines.

The Democratic Party is part of a political movement where someone can't even say the word "corporation" without a sneer of contempt, as though one had said "viper," or "worm." Where businessmen are presumed guilty until proven innocent. Where the idea of giving business a tax break is considered immoral. Where wealth redistribution is the primary activity. Go ahead. Tell me none of this is true.

And then you can tell me again how people become prosperous.