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Townhall
Finance...
Tax Congress!
By John Ransom
Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid want you to know that the
rich are out of control.
After thinking about it for a few years, they have finally figured out
that our economic problems have a very simple explanation: There are
too many rich people.
Too many rich people are causing a jobless “recovery.” Having too many
rich people caused the Fukushima nuclear reactor to meltdown. The rich
are probably responsible for the next ice age too.
Rich people, it’s seems, run up huge budget deficits on silly things
like entitlement spending and road projects that benefit the Illinois
Asphalt Contractors Association.
Rich people demand trillions in stimulus spending, huge mortgage
entitlements for people who can’t make house payments and bloated
pension programs for public workers.
Rich people get special treatment from banks that they are supposed to
be regulating; they encourage the Federal Reserve Bank to print more
money and they borrow gigantic sums from the Chinese.
The rich people are out of control, they tell us.
In order to get them back under control, they have to be taxed.
Obama and his friends want to tax impose a super-tax on the 4 million
household making more than $250,000 per year.
Former Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich writes:
“From the 1940s until 1980, the top income-tax rate on the highest
earners in America was at least 70 percent. In the 1950s, it was 91
percent. Now it’s 35 percent. Even if you include deductions and
credits, the rich are paying a far lower share of their incomes in
taxes than at any time since World War II.”
And that’s just not fair.
“Fair” is also known as the Obama Doctrine.
The Obama Doctrine says that we have to tax the rich in the interest of
fairness. We’d all have less money, for sure. We’d all get to
wait in line for rationed toilet paper and rationed healthcare but
fairness would rule the land.
Sure, the whole Land of Opportunity thing worked for 300 years, but
what about the next 300 years?
Maybe instead America can be the Yeah, We’re the Land of Opportunity,
But Don’t Get Carried Away With It, O.K.?
If those darn rich people would just stop being rich, then we’d have no
budget problems at all.
Some of the rich are guiltily admitting as much. They’ve banded
together into United for a Fair Economy. They’ve signed a pledge
pleading with the government to tax the rich more.
“Seattle-based Judy Pigott, one of the heirs to her grandfather’s
company that builds Peterbilt trucks and other heavy equipment, was one
of the first people to sign the Pledge,” says a press release from the
organization.
“’If we even kept what was in place from the end of the Reagan years
and into those of Bush I,’” says Pigott, “’I suspect we’d not be in a
budget crisis now. Let’s do what it takes to support all of us, since
it takes all of us to keep this nation going.’”
You see, it takes a village to tax the rich.
Of course, Ms. Pigott is probably relying on her considerable economic
experience as an heiress to come to that conclusion.
Economists and historians disagree with Ms. Pigott: “The
historical evidence suggests that capital gains tax reductions tend to
increase tax revenue,’ says Shahira ElBogdady Knight an economist with
the Congressional Joint Economic Study Committee.
“When capital gains tax rates were lowered in 1978 and again in 1981,
revenue climbed steadily. Conversely, when the tax rate was increased
in 1987, revenue began declining despite forecasters predictions it
would increase. For instance, capital gains tax revenue in 1985 equaled
$36.4 billion after adjusting for inflation, yet $36.2 billion was
collected in 1994 under a higher tax rate. In other words, tax revenue
in 1994 was slightly less than it was in 1985 even though the economy
was larger, the tax rate was higher, and the stock market was stronger
in 1994.”
But what about fairness?
Well, in the interest of fairness, there is only one group of people
that need to be taxed.
Tax the rich? No.
Tax Congress instead.
Read it at Townhall Finance
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