The Buffett rule, or tax, is the Obama administration’s latest nomenclature for the millionaire tax, and is named after Warren Buffett, a wealthy billionaire who is in arrears with the IRS over unpaid taxes, but who thinks people like him should pay more taxes to the U.S. treasury. Makes sense, right? The Obama administration apparently thinks that if a tax is named after a rich man, (thereby giving it the Millionaire Seal of Approval) that Americans will hop on board and agree to increasing the tax burden on all those shiftless wealthy people.
The problem with millionaire taxes (and higher taxes in general) is that they may bring in a little more revenue in the short run, but at the expense of money that would have stayed in the economy generating economic growth and job creation.
Why are citizens who make more money and who already pay more taxes than I do responsible for paying a larger share of their income to support the government? They are not.
It is class envy. It is class warfare. It is playground redistribution. It is neo-Marxism.
I paid roughly $10,000 in taxes to the federal government last year. My neighbor, Bob, made a million dollars last year and paid the federal government roughly $200,000. Twenty times what I paid. Who on Earth can say that my neighbor isn’t paying his fair share? He paid what 20 people making my salary pay in income tax! Good for him!
But that’s not good enough for Progressives, and liberal Democrats like Barack Obama. You see, they want Bob to pay $396,000 on his million dollar earnings. Thirty-nine times what I am paying! Because Bob is successful, they want him to pay what 39 average tax payers pay in taxes. And, they want to take away as many deductions from him as they can so that he has a harder time lowering his tax burden than I do.
I think Bob is paying his fair share. He is paying MORE than his fair share. He is an “engine” in the economy of the community. What would be truly fair, in the spirit of American fairness, would be a flat tax, or a Fair tax that would involve everyone paying SOMETHING to the U.S. treasury, including the 47% of Americans who now pay nothing in federal income tax. Russia has a 13% flat tax that everyone pays and that has been very successful…. Russia!
No one person should have to pay a higher percentage of his or her income than another person to the federal government. Check it: In the small island nation of Singapore, everyone is capped at $2500 of their income, no matter how high their income is. And this is an autocratic government. (However, the country does have many other taxes that the U.S. does not.)
It is fundamentally unfair in a nation that is supposed to be fair, and provide a level playing field to expect Bob to pay a higher percentage of his income to the federal government than I do. That is not fair, it is punishment for being successful. The progressive income tax (where one person pays 0%, another person pays 25% and another pays 39% of their incomes) is government theft from people who have been successful, or lucky in their lives.
Why take away the incentive for Bob to spend his extra dollars on boosting the U.S. economy by buying expensive products and services, which provide jobs, or hiring extra employees for his business?
President Obama, if you want to spur consumer spending, excite the economy, and jump start job growth, you need to cut federal spending. You also need to cut the corporate income tax (which at 40% is among the highest in the world -- even the communist-capitalist-dictatorship Red China has a lower corporate income tax). You also need to make permanent the Bush tax rates, and level the tax burden playing field so that everyone has “skin in the game.”
Perhaps Congress should pass a special tax on all people who think they and others aren’t being taxed enough. I think a 90 percent rate would be fair.
No comments:
Post a Comment