Mark Hamill, Luke Skywalker of Star Wars fame and the voice of the Joker in the animated batman series, is attacking Mitt Romney because the guy’s a capitalist. Hamill’s net worth is around $6 million. This makes him rich, even by inflationary standards. Then there’s The Avengers director Joss Whedon who went on a rant about American politics and capitalism. According to  celebritynetworth.com in 2010 Whedon’s wealth was listed at around $45 million. With the success of this year’s The Avengers his wealth is sure to go up since the film has made $1.45 billion

Hamill and Whedon works in a multi-billion dollar industry that depends on people buying tickets to watch its films. Some films cost as much as $250 million to produce, and that doesn’t count the advertising dollars that go into promoting a film.

“Spider-Man 3 officially holds the record with an acknowledged cost of $258 million, while Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and its sequel Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End were produced together on a combined budget of $450 million, making them the most expensive production. Although the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels shared many costs it is estimated that around $300 million was spent on producing At World’s End. More recently there have been reports that Avatar is the most expensive film ever made with speculation that it cost $280 million.”

Why don’t these anti-capitalist capitalists just give the money away instead of spending it on what amounts to unredeeming moving images of color and light? The folks at Comic Book Movie immediately spotted the hypocrisy:

“This hypocrisy is on par with billionaire Warren Buffet’s calls for higher taxes on the rich and yet Mr. Buffet has made no effort to part with larger sums of his money by making a ‘gift contribution’ to the federal government. Stephen King, the acclaimed Horror author, has made the same call for higher taxes on the wealthy but made no effort to donate large percentages of his $400 million wealth.”

The $250 million dollars spent on producing a film went to pay people. The money was distributed (paid) to people who make a lot less money than Hamill and Whedon. Hamill and Whedon  and other anti-capitalist capitalists believe it’s better for government to take money from some people to give it to other people. In the first scenario, people had to work to earn the money they were paid. In the second scenario, recipients of the transfer of wealth don’t have to do anything. Which is the moral scenario?

Hamill and Whedon only get paid when they work. Why shouldn’t this be the case for everyone? Would it help anyone if Mitt Romney had less money? If all of Mitt Romney’s money was taken from him and evenly distributed to every American, each person would get about 75 cents. When they woke up the next morning, they would still be poor.

If all the wealth of the richest Americans was equally distributed to the 310 million people in America, there wouldn’t be an appreciable change in the economic structure of this nation except that with all the wealth redistributed, the incentive to produce more by the productive would be absent, and the recipients would still be poor within a week or less.

Unfortunately, there are enough people who hold to the anti-capitalist ramblings of capitalists like Mark Hamill and Joss Whedon. That’s how Obama got elected in 2008 and might get re-elected in 2012.