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| “I Don’t Want to Punish Your Success…” |
Back in the campaign President in 2008, Barack Obama met Joe the Plumber. Joe took the Presidential wannabe to task for Obama’s plan to raise taxes on people making over $250,000 a year. Joe explained that raising taxes on that amount would rob this small business owner of income that he deserved–because he was willing to work hard, risk capital and buy the business. What magically happened when he bought the business? Did he suddenly become rich because he was now going to file his business taxes under personal income taxes as so many small businesses do?
The exchange was fairly lengthy (here), but the attitude of Obama because crystal clear with this exchange:
The only thing that changes, is I’m gonna cut taxes a little bit more for the folks who are most in need and for the 5% of the folks who are doing very well – even though they’ve been working hard and I appreciate that – I just want to make sure they’re paying a little bit more in order to pay for those other tax cuts. Now, I respect the disagreement. I just want you to be clear – it’s not that I want to punish your success – I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you – that they’ve got a chance at success too.”
In Obama’s world view that ‘piece of the pie,’ as Michelle is famously quoted as talking about, remains static. If the government confiscated more of Joe’s money –if he paid higher taxes–that would mean someone else would get more. Put another way: If Joe made more money someone else necessarily got less. That is ignorant. Worse, the President claimed he didn’t want to “punish [Joe] for his success.” But that’s precisely what he wants to do. It’s exactly what he meant.
Fast forward to Tuesday night in the Presidential State of the Union address where he said he wanted to go after millionaires because–obviously–if they’re able to keep more of what they earned they would be depriving students somehow of getting scholarships or some government program (here).
Before we take money away from our schools or scholarships away from our students, we should ask millionaires to give up their tax break. It’s not a matter of punishing their success. It’s about promoting America’s success.
Either-or. False choice. If you win someone else loses. In Obama’s world there’s no growing the economic ‘pie,’ there’s only rearranging it–confiscating more of it from “rich” people– to give to others. This accomplishes his social goals and stokes the class warfare fires. In Obama’s world there’s only a static–frozen in time–amount of money that can’t be grown and therefore it needs to be redistributed.
There’s no mistake that in the speech which David Axelrod claimed the President took a firm hand in editing that the ‘punish your success’ line was likely inserted by the President.
I’ve noticed one thing in the President’s addresses: when he says he doesn’t want to do something it usually means he does.
Thomas Sowell recently penned a piece (here) in which he takes up the issue of the myth of the ‘rich (here).’
What those who are arguing against “tax cuts for the rich” are promoting is raising the tax rates on families making $250,000 a year and up. A husband and wife making $125,000 a year each are not rich. If they have a kid going to one of the many colleges charging $30,000 a year (in after-tax money) for tuition alone, they are not likely to feel anywhere close to being rich.
Many people earning an annual income of $125,000 a year do so only after years of earning a lot less than that before eventually working their way up to that level. For politicians to step in at that point and confiscate what they have invested years of working to achieve is a little much.
Those who own their own small businesses have usually reached their peak earnings many years after having started their business, and often operating with very low income, or even operating at a loss, when their businesses first got started.
Again, having politicians step in with an extra tax at that point, when later incomes compensate earlier sacrifices, is sheer brass — especially when real millionaires and billionaires have their wealth safely stowed in tax shelters.
Tell ’em where you saw it. Http://www.victoriataft.com
