Trump’s Michael Milken pardon is a big victory for ending harmful class warfare

If one didn’t know better, they may deduce from the media coverage of President Trump’s pardon of Michael Milken, announced Tuesday, that this was a mere case of rich people asking a fellow rich person to help out their rich friend. Certainly many of the people who have asked for this pardon are wealthy, and Michael Milken himself, as evidenced by his incredible capacity for philanthropy over the years, remains extremely wealthy.

But if all people take away from this momentous occasion is the cliche class warfare too many in this day and age are unable to transcend, they will miss a golden opportunity to capture profound lessons about justice, integrity, innovation and truth.

Michael Milken was a capital markets innovator the likes of which Wall Street has rarely seen. Yes, his talent and work made him wealthy, and made many of those around him wealthy, too.

What he also did was turn the Wall Street establishment on its head. He dared crony capitalists to take him on when their legacy business model became competitively impaired by his superseding their obsolete mechanisms for funding the business of America. 

When shallow journalists point out the wealth of those advocating for a Milken pardon they fail to highlight the key factoid: these people didn’t all start wealthy. No, in fact, an immeasurable amount of wealth was created precisely because of Milken’s innovative work. Everybody talks about the jobs created by the work of rich people. In Milken’s case, it’s actually the most indisputable fact of this entire saga - his work in capital markets saved and created jobs, by the millions. Those whose careers in hospitality, telecommunications and the plethora of industries who Milken waved a wand of prosperous innovation over were never asked if they hated him for being rich. 

Well, they didn’t. And they don’t. 

Michael Milken and class envy

May the sick parasite of class envy be purged from our national ethos permanently. This Milken saga started in a period of class envy run amok. And it ends with a righteous pardon amidst a time in American politics where the class envy is at new highs. I am frequently told that the financial crisis played a big role in escalating these class tensions.

In Michael Milken’s world, the financial crisis doesn’t happen. Capital risk is to be always and forever inversely correlated to business risk. He knew this better than any financier of our generation.

All attempts to demonize his supporters are as misguided as the attempts to criminalize his work in the 1980s was. You will not even find a person who actually knows what he was convicted of; that is how trite and preposterous the allegations were. Today, that pitiful historical event has been purged from the national conscience.

Tomorrow, we continue the purge of all class envy, which robs mankind of its God-given dignity and agency, and sets the table for all sorts of oppressive injustice.

David Bahnsen is founder and chief investment officer of The Bahnsen Group, a wealth management firm based in Newport Beach, Calif., with over $2.25 billion in assets under management. 

His latest book is Elizabeth Warren: How Her Presidency Would Destroy the Middle Class and the American Dream (2020).

Follow David on Twitter @DavidBahnsen.