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Another Perspective
What the Heck, Let’s Tax the Rich
It will mean taxing New York and California — and exposing the president’s bicoastal, parasitical elite.
I’m going to make a proposal that’s going to rile a lot of people but if you bear with me I think you’ll see the sense of it. I’m going to suggest that we accept President Obama’s offer that we “raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires” as part of a deficit-reduction agreement.
Now here’s my logic. First of all, we completely take his most powerful weapon out of his hand. The President has already decided he’s going to run his entire re-election campaign around the theme of “making the rich pay their fair share” while Republicans will be cast as “protecting the rich at the expense of the poor and the middle class.” Take this issue out of his hands and he’ll have to run on his own record, which will mean almost certain defeat.
Second, there’s absolutely no chance his plan will do anything to improve the economy. Raising taxes on rich people will make a pathetically small contribution to balancing the budget and will hurt investment, which will ensure that things will be just as bad in November 2012 as they are now. There won’t be any George Bush to blame this time. The electorate will can the President and Republicans can undo all the damage in a very short time.
But here’s the most important thing. When Obama talks about the “millionaires and billionaires” and their $250,000 incomes, he’s really talking about a class of highly professional people who are making a lot of money, not in the private sector but in high-level government jobs and non-profits. Nearly all of these people are concentrated on the East and West Coasts, particularly in New York, Washington and California. This is the core of Obama’s support. He takes in more campaign contributions from one afternoon on Wall Street or in Silicon Valley than he could raise from a month doing bus tours in the middle of the country. Why are we protecting these people? Let them experience the consequences of their misapprehensions. Maybe they’ll find their inner Republican and discover they’re not such enthusiastic tax levelers after all.
New York in particular is filled with people making huge salaries in the educational establishment and non-profit sectors. More than 40 percent of school superintendents in New York State now make over $200,000 in salaries and benefits. The authority here is no less than Governor Andrew Cuomo, who is trying to cap them. One Long Island superintendent makes $346,000. The Governor himself only makes $179,000. The other day there was a story in the paper about some assistant to an assistant principal in New York City who was charged with beating his wife. The article mentioned his salary — $140,000. Obviously his superiors make much more. As Fred Siegel pointed out in The Future Once Happened Here, when President Clinton raised taxes on “the rich” in 1992, “75 percent of the people who saw their taxes go up lived within sight of the Empire State Building.”
The illusion Democrats are operating under is that the Tea Party somehow represents “the rich.” On the contrary, the Tea Party is made up of middle class entrepreneurs and professionals from the middle part of the country. They are in rebellion against the elites of the East and West Coasts. The new issue of Spectator carries an article, “Andrew Jackson, the First Tea Party President.” That is absolutely right. Andrew Jackson did not come to the White House in 1828 with the support of college students, union members, single women, African-Americans, gays, and Hispanics. Jackson’s core constituency was freeholders and small business owners who were rebelling against the East Coast elites who were trying to turn American businesses into a “public-private partnership” on the model of European mercantilism. The major issue was incorporations. The East Coast elite wanted to limit incorporations to monopoly charters granted by the federal government on the model that persisted in England right through the 19th century. (“The King’s ice cream maker” and so forth.) The National Bank was the perfect tool for synthesizing this crony capitalism. In opposing it, Jackson was arguing no differently than Ron Paul. Fortunately the frontier capitalists won their battle and America became a land of free enterprise.
The Tea Party is the contemporary version of this rebellion. Its strength come from Main Street — real estate agents, shopkeepers, and small business owners who are repelled by the marriage of Washington and Wall Street they see taking shape. Obama’s effort to characterize these people as “the rich” is only an attempt to divert attention from his own cozy relationship with corporate executives and Wall Street titans.
If Obama’s effort to “raise taxes on the rich” ever takes shape, the first person to scream will be New York Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic majority leader, who realizes those $250,000 “millionaires and billionaires” are his constituents. Schumer has already complained that “$250,000 makes you really rich in Mississippi but it doesn’t make you rich at all in New York. There ought to be some kind of scale based on the cost of living on how much you pay.” That’s a good start.
But here’s the real reason for adopting Obama’s plan. One of the most important “reforms” he’s pushing is a limitation on itemized deductions for high-income taxpayers. This is where he rolls out the rhetoric about corporate jets. But besides mortgage deductions on homes, the most significant deduction people take — in certain areas of the country, at least — is state and local taxes.
Many high-tax East and West Coast states are living off these federal deductions. For decades, politicians have sold their constituents on extravagant spending-and-taxes on the grounds that “you can deduct all this from your federal income tax.” New York has followed a deliberate policy of raising state and local expenditures in the confidence that these can all be foisted onto taxpayers elsewhere.
As Siegel chronicled in The Future Once Happened Here, New York developed a symbiotic relation with Washington in the 1930s when Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia was able to dump all New York City’s extravagant social spending into former New York Governor Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. The nation’s first public housing project, on the Lower East Side, was started by the city but completed with federal dollars. Today New York has more public housing than the next ten cities put together — all of it heavily subsidized by Washington.
When Medicaid was introduced in 1966, most states saw it as an added financial burden to be carefully circumscribed. California set up a state-run HMO on the model of Kaiser Permanente to keep expenses low. Arizona recently cut 250,000 people off its rolls. But New York officials decided to encourage Medicaid spending as a way of “leveraging” federal dollars.
According to the matching formula, the richest states, like New York, get a 50-50 match while the poorest, like Mississippi, get 75-25. In 49 other states, the non-federal portion comes entirely out of state treasuries. But New York has enlisted cities and counties to kick in half the state’s costs on the principle that the more we spend, the more we collect from Washington. Politicians in Albany are forever proclaiming that expanding Medicaid is healthy because “every dollar we spend brings in three.” As a result, New York’s Medicaid expenses have ballooned to $16 billion a year, more than California and Texas put together, even though those two states both have larger populations. Cities and counties in New York are going bankrupt trying to pay the bill. A few years ago the City of Buffalo tried to disincorporate itself and join surrounding Erie County because it could no longer shoulder its Medicaid expenses.
All this spending has created a huge health/hospital industrial complex that dominates New York politics. The Greater New York Hospital Association regularly takes out full-page ads with Dennis Rivera’s notorious Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union, made up mostly of hospital workers, to encourage the state to spend more on Medicaid. Crain’s New York Business recently ran the following report:
In the midst of the recession, 50 not-for-profit New York-area hospital executives and doctors raked in a combined $120 million, according to Crain’s New York Business’ 2009 rankings.
About the Author
Green Lantern is the pen-name of an East Coast writer.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (70) | Leave a comment
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Kenny| 10.4.11 @ 6:52AM
Since you put it that way ....... why not?
idalily| 10.4.11 @ 2:32PM
Why not? Because it is winning the battle at the expense of the war. It is morally wrong to take more from the "rich" than from everyone else. It's wrong, wrong, wrong. As much as I would love to see wealthy, elitist liberals punished with their own beliefs, it's a devil's bargain and it's still wrong.
TrueBlue| 10.4.11 @ 4:52PM
It'll come back to bite us in the long run. The country needs to stop thinking on short term gains, that's what got us in this predicament, politicians focusing on the yearly budget, kicking the can down the road, instead of thinking long term.
Old Soldier| 10.4.11 @ 7:08AM
Uhhh, no thanks.
I can see the logic of the Republicans sitting on their hands and voting "Present" if the Democrats really want this. No good would come of it.
Darin| 10.4.11 @ 7:19AM
On the plus side, it will expose the lie of such taxes only impacting the "rich" as the middle class will be hit hard as well.
On the down side, once a tax of any sort is in place, it's a bloody battle to get it repealed even temporarily. Permanent repeal might as well be impossible. Be careful what you wish for - you just might get it.
Jimmie R. Darrington, Jr| 10.4.11 @ 9:53PM
I have to respectfully disagree with point #1 Darin. The fact that soaking the rich has a big impact on the middle-class is already empirically demonstrable.
The problem is that people are bogged down in the ideology. They believe that taxing the rich is "fair", or that an increased tax rate always and automatically translates into increased revenue, or perhaps that giving more money (and power) to the government is the answer to the problem. It is difficult to get people to change their minds, even if the writing is all over the wall.
I do emphatically agree with point #2, however. Witness Krugman proclaiming that the stimulus wasn't enough, for example. I can easily see a similar argument being used by the Democrats for ever-higher taxes when the (already) high tax rates don't yield the fruit they were expecting.
Timothy L. Pennell| 10.4.11 @ 7:20AM
I used to read Green Lantern. I didn't realize that he was so stupid.
He wants us to Cut off our Noses, to Spite our Faces?
"I have an idea. Let's let him have everything that he wants. We should stop trying to Drill for our own Energy. We should Raise those Taxes, give him another Trillion of Stimulus/Slush Fund, and Pass whatever Spending Plans, he's got up his sleeve.
Then. When the Country becomes a Third World Economic Wasteland, and our Kids are left with NOTHING. We can say: See? Told ya."
Like I said. I don't remember Green Lantern being so STUPID.
Lesser Weevil| 10.4.11 @ 1:20PM
The worse, the better?
Timothy L. Pennell| 10.4.11 @ 3:08PM
I don't get it.
Brian Mc| 10.4.11 @ 7:23AM
It always strikes me as odd that certain professionals make a killing on the misery of others. I hate to call it as I see it but, to suffer a couple of chickens while holding a few hands out of sympathy seems more noble than forcing bankruptcy onto anyone agonizingly facing the inevitable with nowhere else to turn. It's fundamentally evil and I wonder not why people avoid doctors like the plague. "Yep, the baseball-sized tumor has spread to your lower intestines and I'm afraid that it is terminal: that will be ten thousand dollars, please."
In this day in age, serving humanity through the medical profession seems incongruous.
Here's hoping my step-father does not suffer long. He is deep in my prayers, as is my mother this a.m.
Price will always follow demand and if that demand is unavoidable to all but a few lucky individuals how does one justify what they demand in return for addressing it?
My emotions are getting the best of me, I apologize. I submit this for your consideration.
RJ| 10.4.11 @ 7:41AM
As long as we are having some fun, I propose the "Tax the Democrats Act." After all, they are the ones who are demanding higher taxes, so based on the same logic, let's satisfy their demand. Under our act, a vote for a Democrat Presidential, Senatorial or Congressional nominee would need to be supplemented with the voter's bank account and credit card information wherein a charge would be levied to their account for each vote registered to fund the Democrats upcoming legislation. Some might say this is a poll tax, prohibited by the Constitution, but after all, the Constitution is a "living document" which allows us to do whatever we want in the name of progressivism. We can have Al Gore lecture them on it.
Trinacria| 10.4.11 @ 6:20PM
Personally, I favor the "TAX THE POOR" approach. Any first year policy wonk knows that when you tax something, you tend to get less of it, as the burden of taxation creates a clear disincentive. Want to end poverty? Good - tax it! The more you make, the more you keep - wanna pay lower taxes? Good, work hard, earn more, and move up into a lower tax bracket. By the way, helps with reporting, too - why try to hide income when the net effect is to place yourself in a higher tax bracket?
You could even call in a slick democratic strategist to give it a sexy name like the "American Success Incentivization Initiative" (though I personally favor the acronym-driven title: The "Fed Up with Crazy Keynesian Obamanomic Budgetary Assault on Middle-class Americans" bill).
wheat3000| 10.10.11 @ 8:25PM
Sure - but your morning coffee will cost $13.99 once everybody starts making more money.
DaveD| 10.4.11 @ 7:49AM
Why not? Tax the rich but don't start the taxation until 2016 or later - just like the supposed budget cuts.
Seriously, at some point in time we are probably going to have to raise taxes to get out from under this mess we're in. But lets find some real and substantial budget cuts first.
For years Republicans have been snookered into buying into the promise of X dollars of spending cuts for every dollar of tax increase. The cuts are all coming sometime in the future, while the taxes rise immediately. And stupid Republicans keep going along for god only knows what reason, and the spending cuts NEVER happen.
How 'bout this time we go for tax increases but only AFTER the tax cuts go into effect. Send the tax and spend issue right back to the Democrats where it belongs.
John S.| 10.17.11 @ 11:12AM
Well, we do get "spending cuts". The problem is that in Washington parlance, a "spending cut" is simply a cut in the amount that spending is going to be raised.
In absolute terms, even after a spending cut is enacted, total spending still goes up. It just doesn't go up quite as much.
We don't need spending cuts. We need to reduce the total percentage of the GDP that the Federal Government spends every year, and to restrict it to living within its budget except in times of a declared war.
oldfart| 10.4.11 @ 7:50AM
I think a different approach is needed but would save some significant funds at the Federal level.
Based on US Census data the 2 year average median income, by state was $50,002. There are seven states whose 2 year average median income is above $60,000.
Those states are
Alaska - $60.409
Massachusetts - $60,843
Virginia - $ 60,931
Maryland - $64,635
New Jersey - $64,693
New Hampshire - $65,948
Connecticut - $66,187
What I propose is that because the median income of the states is higher than the median income for the entire USA that the average citizen in those states are doing quite well thankyou.
What is interesting is that while New York and California have pockets of very high incomes - there average citizen is not doing that well.
So we cannot punish the lower income families - if we are follow the thinking of the Great Pretender.
Therefore to promote re-distribution of wealth - overall Federal assistance to those states should be reduced by the percentage variance from the national median income.
This should have a significant impact on reducing the Federal debt and place the burden on those than can afford to help without being too harsh on any one class of people.
Here is the link to that data site:
http://www.census.gov/hhes/www.....index.html
Al Adab| 10.4.11 @ 11:08AM
Sure is an idea. We could mandate that the median income must be 50K for every family. That would end poverty right? I mean, after all 50% of families earn below the median income so why not just raise them up? No one understands mean, average and median anyway. Government is such a benevolent (malevolent?) paternalism anyway why not just make everyone earn the same. We could all be government employees then.
SpiralArchitect| 10.4.11 @ 12:42PM
In Soviet Russia we call it Communism.
Al Adab| 10.4.11 @ 12:50PM
You mean somebody already thought of it and tried it? How did it work for them?
wheat3000| 10.10.11 @ 8:27PM
Sweden seems to be doing quite well actually
TrueBlue| 10.4.11 @ 4:56PM
Actually that 50k a year was one of the "demands" made by the Wall Street protestor crowd. Minimum yearly wage should be 50k regardless of employment.
Southerner| 10.6.11 @ 10:40AM
Of course they don't realize that if we created a $50k minimum income for all Americans, it would drive prices up to the point that $50k would buy about the same that welfare does today, but in the process it would devalue all of our savings and investments.
POST American| 10.4.11 @ 8:07AM
---Need revenue? ---to say nothing of
the recovery of our self respect?
---Open, AUDIT, examine, defund
prosecute and dismantle the deadly
sinister, TAX FREE,
ULTRA RICH Masonic, EUGENICS
mongering, culture and sovereignty
subverting, capstone 'bennie violent' foundations.
They're linked to the founding of the
equally deadly, wholly ILLEGAL, private
FED ----and maybe even more serious
and insidious a plague.
And, while we're at it, end and overturn
all membership, all involvement, all funding
to that other PRIVATE tax free,
banking capstone EUGENICS front op
---the UN -----AFTER they've, likewise, been called out,
audited, examined and richly, deeply,
warmly prosecuted.
Dan Mathewson| 10.4.11 @ 11:31PM
Well, if we get rid of the Fed, does that mean you the Congress to set monetary policy???
Pecos Pete| 10.4.11 @ 8:45AM
Mr. Lantern: I found your thoughts interesting but have to disagree. Let's simply vote the democrats out of office and replace them with fiscal conservatives. One more year during which we keep pressing the Republican House to hold the line. Then we flush the Marxists out of DC.
Margie| 10.4.11 @ 8:45PM
Sounds like a plan. Only.. not R. Paul though.
gearjammer| 10.4.11 @ 9:07AM
The people you wanna tax will be paid more and thus retain or increase take home pay. You really miss the point-higher taxes do not bother rich dems. They do not work in true private sector-movie stars and tv stars come to mind. They just make more and more even though they do not get ratings or sell tickets. TV adds themselves are a joke-we click past them with a remote. Propose a maximum wage on the " STARS ". THEY WILL GO NUTS. Tell Brian Williams hes gotta live on 250k. Or that jerk Damon 100 k a movie is the limit. The economics of entertainment is the biggest scandal of all-we eat it all with our cable bills and xtra we pay for products because if advertising. Were is heritage when ya need them ?
Old Soldier| 10.4.11 @ 9:11AM
Let's crackdown on corporations too - and forget to exclude unions in the legislation.
PolishKnight| 10.4.11 @ 9:16AM
Great minds think alike. I've been proposing this on this forum for about a year. Tax increases would hit mostly blue, coastal states. In addition, the left's anti-Wall Street rhetoric is also an empty, blustering bluff. Socialism always works out to be a crony capitalist system there monopolies are formed via donations and job offers to politicians' relatives and big business buys favorable regulations and even subsidies. Sadly, it was Republican Sonny Bono who demonstrated this when he extended US copyright law by decades at the request of Disney.
Regarding deducting state taxes. Like with mortgage deductions, people get the wrong impress that such deductions mean they are "free". A deduction is different than a CREDIT which is 1 to 1. If your tax bracket is 20%, for example, then you only get 20% of the money you paid in state taxes back. If you pay $2000 a month in mortgage interest, you only get $400 of it back. The other $1600 you can kiss goodbye!
JP| 10.4.11 @ 9:17AM
It took less than 24 hours for Senator Schumer to voice his opposition to Obama's Tax, I mean Jobs Program. I bet his phone range of the hook after the President's gave his speech.
USSAlabama| 10.4.11 @ 9:21AM
Green Lantern,
Not riled.
I have thought this myself, knowing who would really get taxed; if there was a way to exclude Sub S corps -- I would go for it 100%.
David W| 10.4.11 @ 9:22AM
You forget the political secret behind the call for higher taxes on the rich. The democrats and their supporters know that the conservatives/tea partiers/Republicans do not want to raise taxes for anyone, regardless of their income. Thus they can demagogue all they want because they will never be called on it. Thus, Green’s suggestion (may I call you Green?) would almost force them to put their money where their mouth is. All you have to do is to create the bill – and then see how many democrats actually support it.
Here is how you might do it:
1) The tax bill has an expiration date (1 year, 2 year) that can be worded in a way that makes it difficult to extend or renew.
2) Add exemptions (the democrats would love this) that would exempt true business owners from the higher rates
3) Maybe (this might be tricky) require that income from certain tax-free bonds/etc becomes taxable over a certain amount- like $200,000 (this would probably hit John Kerry hard).
4) Here is the biggie, that will truly show the liberals for the hypocrites that they are. Require a federal tax on all movie tickets, on all CD or DVD sales, on any music download, on any video game sale or download. Perhaps have a special federal tax on any actor/entertainer/athlete that earns more than $1,000,000 on anything. Since they are not really producing anything and are sponging off the backs of the low-paid taxpayers (per E. Warren) then they should be willing to pay more in tax.
5) Suggest that any donations to charitable trusts in the amount of more than $2,000,000 would be taxed at the same amount as the “death tax” when the donation occurs (and make it retroactive 10 years). Think this would get Warren Buffet’s attention?
Want to hear the liberal rich complain and moan? Focus the taxes on them and not on the normal rich. See what happens.
PolishKnight| 10.4.11 @ 10:21AM
Unfortunately, David, the more complications you put into a tax bill (even in a simple paragraph such as yours) will translate into reams of paper with hidden riders and special breaks to their constituencies. Namely, union government workers and movie stars would be exempt while oil workers in texas would be double taxed. Get it?
The left secretly knows this is a problem and are trying to set a "cost of living" adjustment specifically to make red stater plumbers into "millionaires" while DC bureaucrats on E street living in million dollar condos get a 10% tax rate.
Perhaps the Republican stonewall is the best policy after all since moving forward the left would get what they want while pretending they wanted something else...
Bob K.| 10.4.11 @ 9:59AM
It is a most modest proposal indeed, Mr. Lantern!
I appreciate the irony.
Occam's Tool| 10.4.11 @ 1:20PM
Nice satire, but not reality. I make over 300 K a year. I'm tired of being Shitbag's target.
Al Adab| 10.4.11 @ 2:46PM
OT:
Do what my doctor is doing and cut your income down to the "government allowed" level. He doesn't take Medicare either. Oh, I should mention that he has decided to quit when Obamacare kicks in.
Petronius| 10.4.11 @ 10:39AM
This is an interesting aside considering where the discussion is pointed. Demoncrats have been so successful for so long at getting the GOP to legislate against the interests of their own constituents, they gained absolute power. The fallacy of this number lies in the liberal definition of "rich". That $200,000 figure is a ruse. The "rich" are everybody who have any disposable income. And the liberals want All of it. They really believe that strict material equality will put an end to envy and conflict in a new world of overseers and serfs in a colossal kindergarten. And the Great and Powerful Obama must make this come about. The pond life camping out with Mikey Moore and Susan Sarandon will not be requited nor feel adequate until he does. This cry for totalitaxation is really a blanket demand for weeniority, and a call to validate those who are only competent enough to draw their next breath.
J P| 10.4.11 @ 10:48AM
Wow, you are asking us to believe that most people earning over $250k are government/non-profit workers based in three locations, then site anecdotal evidence?
And, you point out that Clinton raised taxes on New Yorkers in 1992. Did you forget he handily won re-election in 1996?
Please do a little research before typing out something that others might read, particularly if you're trying to be persuasive.
Anthony| 10.4.11 @ 10:55AM
Let's go all the way here!! Let's just confiscate the wealth of the entire leftist establishment and relieve them of all their collective guilt. Let them truly be one with the poor and downtrodden.
Let Martin Sheen sleep on sidewalks for real, and have Barbara Strisand hang her laundry out to dry while living in her shanty town village.
Let Warren Buffett take some dictation from his overtaxed secretary and bring her her coffee.
Then, let's impose a fat tax on all the fat lefty frauds like Roseann Barr and Michael Moore.
Oh, and triple Obozo's greens fees, dare I suggest he carry his own clubs!!!
Al Adab| 10.4.11 @ 11:11AM
Our wonderful loving paternalistic government should just gurantee all of us a 50K income. That would solve all the problems of income disparity, redistribution, poverty and unemployment. Make it so, no problem.
Seek| 10.4.11 @ 1:30PM
Oh, gee wonderful. And once a liberal administration again takes power -- and it inevitably will -- it can do unto us the same way.
No thanks to that. The notion of using the tax system to destroy one's political enemies is a repulsive totalitarian idea, regardless of who's doing the screwing or who's getting screwed. True liberty requires low taxes for all -- yes, even for people one doesn't much like.
Redstateboy| 10.4.11 @ 11:02AM
I keep hearing rich Liber-uls - like Hollywood Liber-uls howl: "raise our taxes - we're willing to pay more!"
that is thee most infintile, spurious argument because it can be refuted with 8th grader logic.
You wanna pay Liber-uls? Really??! Then cut a F'n! check care of the U.S. Treasury! bunch of disengenious Philistines.
PattyMor| 10.4.11 @ 12:31PM
If we can pick winners and losers in the lottery that is our bloated tax code, why not just raise the taxes on registered Democrats and leave the rest of us alone.
Seek| 10.4.11 @ 1:56PM
My point proven: Conservative culture warriors are as much an enemy of liberty as egalitarian liberals.
Margie| 10.4.11 @ 8:50PM
No. If the Leftists are the ones demanding higher and higher taxes, and conservatives want to instead cut government spending and lower our taxes, then the stupid Leftists should be the ones to eat their own rich.
Or donate more of their income to Big Gov.
aware| 10.5.11 @ 5:58AM
When did "conservatives" ever cut spending? I know they talk about it a lot when angling for the job, but name one time they actually did it. Seek is right, liberty means nothing to the power elite.
Seek| 10.5.11 @ 3:59PM
Indeed. We probably created more socialism in this country during the last six months of the presidency of "conservative" Red Stater George W. Bush than during the previous 30 years combined.
Forget the whole Red State v. Blue State culture war malarkey. Liberty, first and foremost, is what matters.
wheat3000| 10.10.11 @ 8:28PM
Finally an honest person on these forums!
Howard| 10.4.11 @ 1:13PM
One correction; State and local income taxes are components of how Alternative Minimum Tax is calculated. Many middle and upper middle class people in the North East and California pay high state taxes, but due to AMT, they do not get to deduct those taxes in full.
Appleby| 10.4.11 @ 1:49PM
Just make a law that if your job is enjoyable and you get lots of publicity, you have to do it for free. All sports teams and movie stars would be taxed at 100%, because what they do is not work, it's fun. Certain classes of race car drivers would also be included -- NA$CAR, for example, which is not racing, but entertainment.
Daddy always said, "If it was supposed to be fun, they wouldn't call it work." If your work is fun, you shouldn't have to be paid to do it.
Atom&Yves;| 10.4.11 @ 5:14PM
I used to run a 90 lb jackhammer (highway construction/repair) 6-8 hrs a day. The public saw me on the job site 9-10 hrs a day. Sometimes people even stopped and watched, a form of entertainment, I suppose. It was very hard work, but I truly 'loved' doing it. Considering the parameters you outlined, are you suggesting that I shouldn't have received a wage?
Diane| 10.4.11 @ 1:58PM
So what about all the rich people asking the President to raise their taxes? Do they not get a say in this matter?
Joe D.| 10.4.11 @ 2:28PM
I understand your point. However, I think it would hurt too many people on the jobs front. And I don't trust politicians to do the right thing after the fact.
AVCurmudgeon| 10.5.11 @ 12:11AM
Here's the irony: if Obama thought Congress would actually do it, he'd withdraw it. The only reason Obama felt safe in making a proposal that would hurt himself if passed is that he knows it was dead in the water; now he gets to posture as someone who really wants to solve something but all those Congressional do-nothings won't let it happen.
OK, call his bluff. Let's do it, Mr President. Let's tax you at the highest rate, eliminate all your deductions and above all put an end to your use of the world's largest corporate jet for any but purely official functions. I like it.
Simon | 10.4.11 @ 2:30PM
Taxing the rich makes no sense for common taxpayers because the tax money will be spent on military purposes. THe war is a bottomless bucket.
Skippy| 10.4.11 @ 6:42PM
"Military purposes" is about the only thing the Feds should be spending money on.
Everything else they do is either stupid, corrupt or unconstitutional.
martin j smith| 10.4.11 @ 3:31PM
I am not rich-not a millionaire or billionaire. But even I know that the real goal is to tax the life out of everyone because everyone knows that the millionaires and billionaires will never have enough dough to change our predicament. The Socialists want to kill anyone who is not poor and who is not a Socialist.
I HAVE A BETTER PLAN: LETS DEMAND THAT THOSE ON THE LEFT WHO ADVOCATE
FOR INCREASE TAXES OPEN THEIR INCOME TAX BOOKS SO WE CAN SEE IF THEY PAY THEIR FAIR SHARE.
SECOND; HOWS ABOUT THE BUFFETTS AND OBAMAS CONTRIBUTE 25% OF THEIR WEALTH TO BRING US BACK.
jackc| 10.4.11 @ 4:09PM
Obama doctrine:
1) Punish the rich, to buy the majority poor votes.
2) Punish the successful, to command and control.
3) Punish the healthy, to expand government interference.
4) Punish the learned, to control through the proliferation of illiteracy.
5) Punish free speech, to promote fear.
6) Punish entrepreneurship, to create a welfare state.
7) Punish self-direction, to control and manipulate.
8) Promote illiteracy, to effectively pontificate and quibble.
Get rid of this malaise soon.
Wayne| 10.4.11 @ 6:15PM
I define the ultra-rich as those government workers who make much more than their private counterparts. We should tax them by cutting their salaries to the level that is the same. After all that is only fair.
Pat| 10.4.11 @ 6:26PM
What the heck, let’s tax the poor. God certainly made a lot of poor folks – Obama helped - but quantity alone shouldn’t be the sole deciding factor. And with all these poor Americans freely accepting government services, can we really afford not to tax them? What’s the sole reason the poor want to tax the rich – because they themselves are not rich, that p*sses them off and consequently the rich deserve it from their selfish viewpoint. So, following that line of reasoning, the un-poor shouldn’t feel all this self-assigned guilt over taxing the heck out of the poor.
And when did the poor get less service, armed protection or “general welfare” than the rich in this country? The Army would defend Detroit from foreign invasion just as fiercely as Beverly Hills. And if Chicago’s south side is hit by devastating tornadoes, the feds will rush in massive aid and nobody will ever get billed for it. Somehow, this “get top notch service even if you never pay for it” idea is very un-American. You never get a seat in First Class for the same price as coach, you pay extra for the premium channel on cable and valet parking costs you more than hiking in from the back lot.
And “you get what you pay for” never comes up when the topic is Americans who pay no income taxes. Shouldn’t there be an “alternative minimum tax” for those who pay no taxes now simply due to the dubious virtue of being poor? In this country, it takes very little actual talent to be poor and remain that way, so why shouldn’t the poor pay more in taxes for doing less than their “fair share”? Probably Warren Buffet would agree the poor should pay nothing for all the government services they can readily consume but I bet a lot of taxpaying Americans don’t agree with ol’ Warren.
wheat3000| 10.10.11 @ 8:30PM
The rich only get that way by paying people less than they are actually worth.
e track from saq| 10.4.11 @ 8:10PM
Great article,and game theory seems to imply that
for the sake of the sane in this country a new strategy could possibly be the payout that we need
in order to beat the beast in next years election.
Playing the same old game makes an opponent easy to beat,despite our high morals or more logical ideas we really are at the mercy of a simple zero sum game that the dum dum democrates play well.
Because their evil.Really, I mean mess up the whole world evil.I mean why worry about taxes when the whole state has collapsed.
Sean| 10.4.11 @ 8:14PM
Why not have targeted taxes? Tax Hollywood, lawyers, bankers and government officials.
AVCurmudgeon| 10.5.11 @ 12:09AM
Oddly I had the same thought this afternoon. Fine. Tax the rich, Mr President. Make "the rich" (such as yourself) pay at the highest possible rate and eliminate their (your) various deductions. Let's also get rid of corporate jets, beginning with AF1 used for any but official state purposes.
Obama put his "jobs bill" forward in part because he knew it could not pass. OK, Eric. Call his bluff and see what happens.
I like it.
PattyMor| 10.5.11 @ 10:16AM
Why don't we just cut to the chase and implement the "Rosie solution". If the rich bankers won't give up their wealth, let's just send them to the guillitine. That way they won't need their wealth any longer!
What's so pathetic about all this is that the super rich such as Soros, Warren Buffoon, Bill Gates, George Kaiser and most of Wall Street and the Bankers are all Lefites.
Seek| 10.5.11 @ 4:02PM
In other words, soak the rich so long as they're liberals. No deal. As for Roseanne Barr/Madame Defarge, you can have that "she-devil."
Southerner| 10.6.11 @ 10:44AM
One thing that really makes me wonder is that the left always talks about taxing "the rich" then they want to set caps based on income. Income is not wealth. If they want ot tax the "rich, why not just take 50% of the net worth away from every person with a net worth above 500 million? Note that would have a much larger impact on the truly rich, without affecting the upper middle class at all. Oh wait, that would mean Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, George Soros...
Now I see why they don't suggest that.
Mark Anderson| 10.6.11 @ 2:09PM
Of course the easy way to balance the budget would be to make all the red (small) states like South Dakota only get back what they send in to the federal government. The conservative welfare states shouldn't complain to badly.
KenoshaMarge| 10.6.11 @ 3:58PM
Loved this post! Brilliant.
What I wouldn't give to see the look on Chuck Schumers face if the bill passed.
neverends| 10.6.11 @ 6:22PM
Brilliant!!
It is the perfect answer. It would absolutely diffuse all the donks talking points and the incapable imbicles that occupy the white house and the party known as democrats would have to sink in their own feces!