GOVERNMENT DOESN’T “ASK” ANYTHING: Thomas Sowell rips apart President Obama’s recent remark opining that the way to reduce poverty is to “ask from society’s lottery winners” that they make a “modest investment” in government programs to help the poor.
[T]he federal government does not just “ask” for money. It takes the money it wants in taxes, usually before the people who have earned it see their paychecks. Despite pious rhetoric on the left about “asking” the more fortunate for more money, the government does not “ask” anything. It seizes what it wants by force. If you don’t pay up, it can take not only your paycheck, it can seize your bank account, put a lien on your home and/or put you in federal prison.
So please don’t insult our intelligence by talking piously about “asking.”As for referring to successful individuals as “society’s lottery winners,” Sowell observes:
And please don’t call the government’s pouring trillions of tax dollars down a bottomless pit “investment.”
Most people who want to redistribute wealth don’t want to talk about how that wealth was produced in the first place. They just want “the rich” to pay their undefined “fair share” of taxes. This “fair share” must remain undefined because all it really means is “more.”
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Obama goes further than other income redistributionists. “You didn’t build that!” he declared to those who did. Why? Because those who created additions to the world’s wealth used government-built roads or other government-provided services to market their products.
And who paid for those roads and other government-provided services if not the taxpayers? Since all other taxpayers, as well as non-taxpayers, also use government facilities, why are those who created private wealth not to use them also, since they are taxpayers as well?
linkThe fact that most of the rhetorical ploys used by Barack Obama and other redistributionists will not stand up under scrutiny means very little politically. After all, how many people who come out of our schools and colleges today are capable of critical scrutiny?
Update: When liberals say I'm "lucky", well--Peter Dinklage, in the picture I downloaded from Facebook, says it best:
I agree that the rich shouldn't be addressed as 'lottery winners' who need to give their 'fair share' to the Government.
ReplyDeleteBu, I'm asking you -- before you read the rest of my response -- if you had to take all of the taxes people paid -income, sales, bridge tolls, FICA, property, gas, utilities, capital gains, inheritances …everything. Would you favor a tax system whichmakes it so, as an average ((sum of all taxes and fees) - credits) / total income the average tax rate is -- and keep in mind, you still need to fund necessary overnment -- would it be
a) the rich pay a higher average rate
b) everyone pays the identical rate
c) the poor pay a higher rate.
Decided?
If you want to argue b) I'm willing to listen; but the fact is, if you want a flat rate, that rate would be prohibitively high unless you dramatically cut federal spending. Those republicans touting the 17% number, if you get rid of loopholes? Um, no. Most people, depending on theirstate, pay betweent 40-50% of their income in taxes. You cannot convince me that dropping it to 17% is even remotely viable. Sounds goo, though.
If you want to argue c), then, honestly, you'e an a-hole. And I don't think I 've ever met someone who could argue that point and keep a straight face.
So that leaves us with c). But if we want to do this correctly, we need to acknovledge some things. First we currently tax the poor more than the rich, all things told. But -- unless your a fairminded economist, you don't think that's how it works. So, that must be changed. Second: we need tax transparency. You tax only income, and you make sure peopl understand how tax brackets work. For example, if you have a top taxrate of 90% on incomes above $30,000,000,000, that does not mean that if you earn $31,000,000,00 you pay 90% of it to the government ; it means you pay 90% of that ladst 1.000.000.000. And that rate is too high for my liking, but you get the point.
Then you go out and say … these are the tax rates we need to have in ordr to fund our current level of government: if you think it's too high, vote to cut. If not, you're okay. If you want to fiddle with the brackets? cool. but you need the rich to pay more to fund the system, and there is no changing that.