David Welch's ranting about liberals ("Liberals embrace a false narrative", Sept.19) is off the mark. What liberals and President Obama (who is a centrist, not a liberal) have embraced is not "the idea that wealth is unearned and that anybody who has wealth is undeserving of it" or that earning money as an entrepreneur is "immoral or evil."
What they have embraced is quite different. It is the concept of economic fairness, a foundation of our democratic capitalist society: All boats should be lifted by economic growth, not just those of a tiny elite, because growth is produced by all the boats, big and small. Everyone, from minimum wage earners to CEOs, should benefit to some degree when productivity increases and society becomes richer.
It is not only morally justified; it also makes good economic sense. Failure by the capitalist system to deliver that basic fairness makes people lose faith in it, threatens the stability of society and acts as an invitation for the government to step in. If you truly want government to stay as small as possible, you should fervently support fairness at all levels of the economic system.
Jean-Francois Briere
Albany