This is one of the most asinine things I have ever heard. For many reasons. One, we are punishing successful people. Hey, Bob, way to start a business and make lots of jobs for citizens and help the economy. To thank you we are going to take it from someone like yourself that has worked hard to make a living and provide for your family, and we are going to give it to someone who doesn’t have as much. What?!?!? Are you kidding? Do they have a job or work hard? It doesn’t matter, they don’t have as much so they need it. But what if their sitting on the couch all day watching DirecTV and eating Funyons? “Doesn’t matter,” says Uncle Sam.
Here’s another way this works in practical terms cause some people still think that’s a good idea. Lets say you have a good amount of money and you have bought yourself 4 cars. The government says “Hey you don’t really need four cars there are only 3 drivers in your house, we are going to take one of your cars and give it to someone that needs one. The Bible has a word for that, its called stealing. That is a major problem with a scaled tax bracket. Its a form of stealing from people. Thats a whole other blog. Fair tax. I’ll have to do that one later.
Believe it or not, the Bible has something to say about economics. Here is Jesus’ model. In the Parable of the Talents, a man gave one servant 5 talents, another 2 and another 1. A talent simply represents money. The man with 5 talents goes and makes 5 more. The master says “great job bro, way to make some cheese.” The man with 2 makes 2 more and again the master says. “You da man, way to be.” The man with one talent says, “but master I knew you were a hard man so I didn’t do anything with it.” The master then says “ok clown, I’ll take the ONE that you had and give it to the man that made 5.” Why? Would Jesus really be that mean? Yes, because he knows the man was faithful to steward what he had been given and he will do the right thing with one more talent.
Simply put, its not the government’s job to take care of the poor. It is the believers job and the churches job. I’m not even going to give a scripture reference cause its so obvious if you don’t understand that, you simply do not read your Bible enough. When we do it, which is unfortunately not very often we do a much better job than the government. Redistribution of wealth should come out of the overflow of a heart that wants to please God and help the poor, giving someone a handout is not going to make their problem any better, it simply prolongs it. We literally are keeping people in bondage when we do that. But a body of believers and group of Christians that care for each other can live out the book of Acts and actually meet needs on a holistic level. People can actually get free and out of their cycle of poverty.
Its so unbiblical and illogical its not even funny. Just for the record, I definitely don’t make enough money that the government would take any from me. I disagree with it purely on a fundamental and philosophical basis. I’m no economist, but this is just crazy. Terrible idea. What is scary is that these exact words have actually been said on the campaign trail and Americans just go right along with it. I’ll finished how I started. Asinine.
The philosophy behind a progressive tax (where those who make more are taxed more) is that the infrastructure of the economic system in the United States allows people to be successful. Those who take advantage of this system and make money put back a little more into the system that benefited them. The fact that so many people are on Fox News squawking that Obama is going to redistribute your wealth is what is asinine. His plan is to go back to a Clinton Tax level, with a highest tax of 39% (compared to the current 35%). This will not affect most people. If you look back in history, under Nixon the highest tax level was 60%. Under Eisenhower it was closer to 90%. Adam Smith, the originator of the idea of a Free-Market economy was in favor of a progressive tax. A higher tax rate for people who make more money is not punishing them; it is re-investing in the infrastructure that makes wealth possible.
Matt, I will have to respectfully disagree. Joe Biden himself said multiple times that wealth distribution is what our nation needs in his stump speeches. He actually used the verbage “wealth redistribution” exactly. Its all over the internet, its coming out of their mouths, and FOXNews isn’t the only group reporting it either. CNN a traditionally liberal network has talked about it.
Obama is actually now backing down in the days leading up to the election on his 250,000 number he’s talked about so much, Joe Biden was just quoted by WNEP in Scranton, PA on October 27th saying they were lowering it to 150,000. Obama says tax cuts for 95% of Americans is bologna. With all the stuff that he wants to add, you think our national deficit is bad now from the frivolous spending of the Bush administration, just wait four more years if he gets elected tomorrow with a Democratic House & Senate. It will be a nightmare for our nation financially. Part of the reason that is a stupid ridiculous policy is if you live in NYC 150,000 will not get you near as far as it will in the middle of Oklahoma. You could barely live in the city and have kids making that much money cause its so expensive. A flat line of 150,000 will affect people living in different cities differently, it doesn’t respect cost of living in expensive areas of the country. Thats a major reason why scaled tax scales are ridiculous, and the fact that you are punishing people for being responsible and productive.
Just because Adam Smith is the father of the free market economy doesn’t mean his tax structures are the best way to go. I have not read anything by Adam Smith but I know that he also lived in the 1700’s and the political and economic landscape was drastically different, you cannot just take something someone said about the economy 220 years ago and just assume it will work today, that is the exact thing Obama is accusing McCain of doing. I know one thing for sure, the government did not pay for all the services it does now 220 years ago. That argument of saying he favored a scaled tax bracket doesn’t hold water for me.
It may sound nice to say things like “re-investing in the infrastructure that makes wealth possible” thats just simply not true. The government does not create jobs, companies like Google that started 10 years ago that now have thousands of employees create jobs, its the ingenuity of people that creates jobs. Regardless of what people think about Wal-Mart, (this is not about whether or not they treat their employees right or whatever), this is about the tens of thousands of jobs they created. I could go on and on. The government doesn’t create jobs.
Our infrastructure that you are mentioning doesn’t create wealth and opportunity. Lets evaluate our infrastructure. Social Security, do I need to comment on that nightmare? Education, we spend more on education than any other nation in the world and our education is consistently worse. Medicare and Medicaid do not create jobs or wealth, they are just a massive burden on taxpayers. Welfare, since FDR started welfare, it has done nothing but get worse and there are more people living in poverty than ever in our nation. Our infrastructure is not helping anyone make wealth.
What makes wealth is hard working individuals, when we begin to look for the government to give us a handout all the time, it keeps people from working hard and creating wealth. Governments do not create wealth, people do.
Still love you though:) we just disagree on some things:)
It is not just the Clinton tax level. He is also proposing an increase in capital gains taxes, an increase in payroll taxes, doing away with the Medicare cutoff, and re-instating the death tax. That is just if he actually does what he says he is going to do.
However, it is hard to believe that a man who has never supported, never voted for, and never sponsored legislation that would actually cut taxes for anyone will follow through on that already atrocious campaign promise. Even within this short campaign the number designated by Obama and his running mate Biden that designates one who is wealthy has decreased from 300,000 to 250,000, to 200,000 to 150,000. Sorry but I am not buying the “clinton tax” structure.
On top of that when is enough enough? The top ten percent of income earners in this country already account for 83% of the federal income tax. Why is it OK to tax them even more. Also, the proposed “tax cut” for 95% of Americans is a farce as well. Not that many working Americans even pay federal income tax. In fact the bottom 50% of income earners at this point only account for a mere 2.8% of the federal income tax revenue. What he is actually talking about is tax rebates that will result in the government writing checks to 63 million Americans who pay ZERO federal income tax. That is the epitome of a socialize welfare state. This is well documented by the Wall Street Journal. He will never be able to pay for all his proposed spending without jacking everyones tax rates or instituting much higher taxes on the over 150,000 dollar earners and the big bad companies. With his additional capital gains tax a lot less capital will be flowing into an already stifled and slow market. Add to it payroll taxes and mandated healthcare taxes/premiums and you will see massive layoffs around the country. Make no mistake companies, unlike the government, must turn a profit and with such anincreased burden they will cut overhead, all those big bad companies are this nations employers, and guess who is going to feel the effects? Yep all those middle class Americans Obama and Biden are promising to come save.
His economic policy is so fundamentally flawed it is absolutely amazing that he has been able to carry on about it withhout being called to the carpet, other than WSJ and conservative talk radio. As Ross said, it is assinine.
I am mostly going to keep quiet, but just wanted to come out of the shadows to say, “I like you Ross.” Another factor that most middle class folks don’t think about is that the wealthy person with 10 cars and 5 houses bought those from companies who employ the working class. That means that if they didn’t have the money to buy them, the working class people would be out of a job. And since most of the working class probably can’t think of how to start their own business, they just jump on the welfare bandwagon and complain to everyone that the wealthy have too much money. Hmmm, seems like a cycle here. OK, I’m done. Keep up the good work Ross.
I like you too D’Louhy