I'm a capitalist.

I really am. But I suppose I need to remind people of that from time to time. I think the free market system has been great for Western civilization. It's the most efficient way of allocating goods and services and has created serious wealth in the United States and elsewhere. I'm also in favor of people getting rich. Really. I think people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs should be wildly compensated for their contributions to society.

I'm all for rich people living in mansions in places like Lake Forest and Kenilworth and owning vacation homes in places like Vail or the Hamptons (or both). I think rich people should be able to send their kids to expensive private schools and join country clubs if they want. And I'm all for them riding in the backs of limousines to airports to ride first-class (or on private jets) to those vacation homes. And I think they should be free to leave a ton of their hard-earned money to their children and grandchildren. I really do.

But I also believe that not everyone has the aptitude for college or the ability to start a small business. Some people, let's face it, are "worker bees." But I think they should be able to graduate from high school and get a reasonably secure job that provides them with a nice middle class lifestyle. And that lifestyle should allow them to be able to purchase a modest home over thirty years' time, educate their kids at decent public schools and save enough money for a dignified retirement at age 65 or 70 (or beyond). They would have access to affordable health care and their jobs would provide them a couple of weeks' paid vacation each year. In their spare time, they could take their kids to the local park, swim at the local public pool and go camping once a year in one of the national parks. And if their kids turned out to be good students and were so inclined, they could attend reasonably priced community colleges and/or public universities. And they could go on to have nice lives themselves.

Not exactly Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, but not all bad, either.

Now I know what some of you are thinking: European-style socialism! Okay, so what? It's also the America in which I grew up -- the America of the post-war period, before the Reagan Revolution. The rich were rich, the middle-class were middle-class, and the poor were a problem for the rest of us to solve. Nowadays, while the rich are getting richer, the middle-class is disappearing, and the poor, well, let's just pretend they don't exist.

Would I like to see the U. S. move more toward the European model? Yes, I would. But before you scream too loud, ask yourself, which would you rather have, the America of the 1950s and '60s, or the modern-day Republican version of Paul Ryan's and, yes, Mitt Romney's -- a Latin American Banana Republic in which one percent are rich beyond your wildest dreams and everyone else is left to rot?