I was once asked if I was RightWisconsin’s Savvy Pundit. I am not, but I certainly agree with this:

The PGA Championships have tens of thousands of visitors coming to see our state at its finest. The direct economic impact of this major championship runs conservatively near $100 million. The positive exposure the state gets on television nationally and worldwide is priceless. So let’s all celebrate summer. Let’s celebrate golf. Let’s celebrate Wisconsin. As the slogan says “This is Major!”

But while you’re at it take a moment to celebrate capitalism; to celebrate wealth; to celebrate the much-maligned 1%; because the story of the PGA at Whistling Straits is a story of the American Dream – old school style.

It’s about immigrants who worked to build a successful company and make themselves filthy rich. It’s about rich capitalists who fought like crazy to keep government out of their pockets so they could keep use their riches how they saw fit not how some statist bureaucrat wanted. It is about one-percenters who followed their own dreams with their own money – dreams so big and audacious they could have never been dreamt by government. Quite frankly, the story of the PGA at Whistling Straits is a story that many in society and politics today are working to see is a story of America’s past not its future.

In 1873, an Austrian immigrant – John Michael Kohler – started the Kohler Company. He didn’t ask for a startup grant or a handout. All he expected was the opportunity that America offered. Over the next century and a half his family company has grown large and profitable, provided tens of thousands of jobs, and quite literally built a community – Kohler, Wisconsin.

The Kohler Company didn’t invest in their community and their employees because of some government mandate. They did so because it was good business, made their successful company even more successful and yes, made them even richer. In 1929, the CEO of the company – Walter Kohler – even became the CEO of the state as Wisconsin’s Governor.

Fast forward to the mid 1970’s and the Kohler family recognized the market potential of the great outdoors and opened the 600-acre River Wildlife nature preserve where people could buy memberships to hunt, fish, canoe, hike, ski and just generally enjoy the beauty of the great outdoors. Kohler did it with their own money – not state Stewardship Fund dollars. They didn’t protect nature by zoning others out. They did it by buying the land, preserving the land, protecting the land, and, not incidentally, making money off inviting others in to enjoy the land.
In 1981, the Kohlers used their wealth to renovate former immigrant factory worker dorms into the world-renown American Club Hotel and Resort. As the Midwest’s only five-diamond resort the American Club drew guests from all over the world to the suburbs of Sheboygan, Wisconsin. These guests left their money in Wisconsin and took positive images and memories of our state back home with them: all thanks to the Kohlers’ using the money they had to make even more money.

In 1988, shrewdly reading the market for customer demand, the Kohlers invested their wealth into the creation of Blackwolf Run, a world-class golf course that drew a whole new group of visitors to Kohler for a whole new reason – visitors that Herbert Kohler Jr. knew would need a place to stay: a place like his hotel, the American Club.

A decade later, building on the fabulous success of Blackwolf Run, Mr. Kohler was at it again, dipping into his vast wealth to transform a desolate windswept stretch of Lake Michigan shoreline into the major championship-attracting gem that is Whistling Straits.

What we are seeing played out before our very eyes in Wisconsin this week is something that the slackers, the ninety-nine percenter malcontents, and the Barack Obama-Bernie Sanders wing of the political world refuse to acknowledge. The very rich are very good for a society. The very rich do not bury their wealth in a hole or hide it in a mattress. They use some of it for philanthropy and foundations. They invest some of it – giving other budding entrepreneurs the means to pursue their own dreams. They save some of it in financial institutions that finance the homes, educations and dreams of middle class families. And they spend a LOT of it. Sometimes that spending goes into making their businesses bigger and more profitable and in need of more workers. Sometimes that spending goes toward big, crazy dreams and avocations like building world-class hotels or golf clubs. In short, the wealth of the very rich enriches us all in a host of both direct and indirect ways, and opposing or discouraging creation of that kind of wealth makes us all poorer.

The PGA Championship at Whistling Straits this week did not just happen. It is not a fortuitous confluence of timing or a quirk of nature. It is not the result of some elaborate economic development plan cooked up by government in Madison or Washington. The PGA at Whistling Straits happened because of private wealth, generated by a capitalist economy, creatively – and voluntarily – put into in productive action.

So as you watch the beauty and drama of major championship golf live from the tiny town of Mosel, Wisconsin this week, take a moment to raise a glass or two. Raise a glass to capitalism. Raise a glass to wealth. Raise a glass to letting people keep the wealth they’ve earned and use it as they see fit. And raise a glass to John Michael Kohler, to Herbert Kohler Jr. to immigrants’ dreams, and to the hope that that those dreams can still come true for tomorrow’s immigrants and entrepreneurs.