by: Les Carpenter
Rational Nation USA
Birthplace of Independent Conservatism
And the class warfare goes on, and on, and on. The progressive Moonbattery {following} continues.
You can tell something’s happening in the economic policy debate when you start reading more things like AEI’s Arthur Brooks explaining that it would simply be unfair to raise taxes on the rich. Harvard economics professor and former Council of Economics Advisor chairman Greg Mankiw has said the same thing. And of course Representative Paul Ryan is both a fan of Brooks and a fan of the works of Ayn Rand. Which is just to say that we used to have a debate in which the left said redistributive taxation might be a good idea and then the right replied that it might sound good, but actually the consequences would be bad. Lower taxes on the rich would lead to more growth and faster increase in incomes.
Now that idea seems to be so unsupportable that the talking point is switched. It’s not that higher taxes on our Galtian Overlords would backfire and make us worse off. It’s just that it would be immoral of us to ask them to pay more taxes even if doing so would, in fact, improve overall human welfare.
If that sounds remotely plausible to you, you might have a lucrative career ahead of you working as an apologist for said Galtian Overlords. If not, then congratulations for possessing a modicum of common sense.
The idea that the wealthy ought to pay more in taxes, IE: a higher marginal rate, is simply morally wrong. The belief that those who are more successful economical should be taxed at a much higher rate {in other words punished for their success) defies objective logic. It is the product of class envy and is the rallying cry of the progressive socialists and neo Marxist in our society.
Each individual is entitled to reap the maximum benefit of their labor and industry. The fruits of that labor ought to be taxed at the same marginal rate regardless of income generated or received. Lets, for the sake of argument use the following example using a 15% rate to keep it simple.
- Income earner #1 – $50,000 income @ 15% = $7,500 income tax
- Income earner #2 – $250,000 income @ 15% = 37,500 income tax
- Income earner #3 – $1,000,000 income @ 15% = $150,000 income tax
- Income earner # 4 -$2,500,000 income @ 15% = $375,000 income tax
The real issue, the one progressive conveniently chose to ignore is this, it is indeed immoral for the governemnt to extract a greater share of the labor and industry of the very successful at the point of a gun held to their head just because they have achieved greater financial success.
Simplify the tax code and close the loopholes. And by the way, cut unnecessary and duplicative spending, cut the defense budget, reduce foreign welfare, and restructure entitlements. It’s that simple, yet remains complicated for some.
More at Modeled Behavior.
Cross posted to Rational Nation USA
Via: Memeorandum
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