On Monday, President Obama arrived at the place that many presidents reach when a recession won’t quit: He went after the rich.
Obama said he planned to increase tax rates on the wealthy, to ensure they “pay their fair share, just like everybody else.” Republicans called Obama’s ideas “class warfare” and suggested that they would hurt the economy by leaving small-business owners with less money to spend.
Their argument sets up a replay of an old American debate occurring across a new political landscape.
If there is no material reward for the self-sacrifice involved in educating oneself; if there is no reward for taking risks, investing money, investing hard work and time into the start up or running of a business that employs and pays other people; if there is no reward for going to work and being well paid for acquired skills and the useful application of those skills; etc., then why do it?
And, without people who do the above mentioned things, there will be no prosperity.
Instead, there will be even more widely spread mediocrity and under achievement and non achievement and ignorance will rule the world.
That is not to say that within our economic system that there are not economic predators who take unfair/unethical/illegal/immoral advantage of economic opportunities in the manner of predators and vultures.
But, to attack people on the simple basis that they earn more money than some other people, will destroy our economic system.
And when our economic system is destroyed by this type of class warfare, then everybody will be poor. Possibly very poor, very hungry, and very lacking in warmth and shelter.
I agree with Anglican First on this one. Even a child can see the unfairness of this. Remember the Little Red Hen. Although I hadn’t heard of it until one of the GOP presidential candidate debates, I found the idea of Cain’s nine-nine-nine very appealing, and sensible.
But don’t you know, Obama and the Progressives want everyone to be equal to everyone else (well, almost!) and that means everyone reading at the same low grade level, everyone making the same low pay, everyone getting the same mediocre care.
Equality across the board always requires rounding down.
And the AP (!) has debunked this rhetoric:
Of course, Warren Buffet has little salary income and mostly capital gains income, which is taxed at a lower rate, but the money he put in to invest (and what is generating his capital gains) is money that he already paid taxes on. So the whole comparison is infinitely ridiculous.
Branford……as to the 1,470 who paid no taxes. You should look at the individual reasons that they paid no tax. For example, a taxpayer may have suffered a very large net-operating loss [NOL] in the year before which may well have caused no tax to be due in the year mentioned. And other reasons can cause this ….some taxpayers have large capital loss carryforwards. When you look at the taxes the wealthy pay over a three or five year period, the results maybe a lot different.
btw
If I had $1 billion of tax payer money and was trying to create jobs and spur economic growth, I think it would be more effective to give it to Warren Buffet, let him invest it as he sees fit and let him keep the profit than to let any politician (or worse group of politicians) decide where to invest it.
Who would you rather have the money?
If it is true the Warren Buffett’s secretary pays higher taxes than he does….maybe the solution is to reduce the secretary’s taxes, rather than to raise Buffett’s.
KevinBabb: His secretary would pay exactly the same amount of taxes on income from dividends and capital gains that the idiot Buffett does…. They are comparing two different categories of income. And someone needs to remind Obama that EVERYONE will be living on their dividends and capital gains in the future, because that is where our retirement savings are going…..
This is a typical Obama shell game ploy. He means to tax the middle class equal to what millionaires formerly paid. His entitlement programmes for his cronies (those now guaranteed jobs and incomes under his diversity program: illegal immigrants, democrats, socialists, gays) will feed off the (remaining) prosperity and security and retirement savings of small business and families.