The Democrat campaign theme for 2012 is clear. You tell the voters something like this:
“So, dear voter! Are you are unhappy that there are people who have more than you have? They drive nicer cars, live in nicer homes, take nicer vacations and are going to be able to retire earlier than you? Well … we feel your pain, and we see no reason why you should have to get up before the sun and drive home in the dark to have the same lifestyle. Everybody knows that you should be able to have the lifestyle you desire, no matter how lavish, on a 40-hour work week. And if 40 hours a week is not enough to put the car you want into your garage, the flat-screen you want on your living room wall, the money you want into your bank account, and the tickets for that South Pacific cruise on your dresser, well then your friendly Democrat public servant is here to help. It’s all so simple! You just vote for us and keep us in power in Washington, and we’ll simply use the police power of government to take money away from those people who have so much more than you do, and give it to you. It’s called ‘redistribution of the wealth’ and we are your redistributors. After all, it’s not like they actually worked for and earned that money! Everybody knows that wealth is distributed, not earned”
Now we have the corrupt New York Congressman, Democrat Charlie Rangel, on the “redistribute the wealth” side of the tax the rich. In a speech on the House floor yesterday, he called for the redistribution of wealth and slammed the rich for benefiting from wars fought by the poor and middle class.
Here is Rangel’s quote:
“Why is it that we know, or that we can suspect, that in this war where we lost so many lives, that so many people have been wounded, that our brave men and women coming home will subject themselves with a lack of funds to deal with their physical or mental problems? And yet we somehow know that that 1 percent was not involved in defending our great nation. We can almost know without any investigation that the wealthiest of Americans never found themselves protecting our flag.”
Wow! Now that’s stepping up the class warfare a bit. Rangel is really into this. I don’t know anyone who is suggesting that the men and women serving in our military do not deserve every bit of healthcare they need when returning from serving our country. But really, what does that have to do with the 1% — whoever they are? While nothing can compare to putting one’s life on the line, there is also something to be said for those who are actively working to grow our economy, create jobs and contribute to the economy prosperity of our nation. Without our dynamic private-sector economy, an economy driven by investors, jobs creators and entrepreneurs, we simply wouldn’t have the means to protect this nation, let alone provide for our veterans after their service is complete.
Economic prosperity contributes to our ability to fund the medical advancement that provides top-of-the-line care for our brave men and women returning from war. This should not be demonized, and it also shouldn’t be presented an an either/or scenario as Rangel has done. If we lack the funds to properly cover the medical expenses of our veterans it is certainly not because Americans – including the evil rich – aren’t paying enough in taxes. Perhaps it has something to do with spending hundreds of millions of dollars on idiotic and wasteful vote-buying schemes to keep politicians in power. Now I could spend 100,000 words here detailing how congress wastes money. For instance .. would you rather seen $3 million given to a university researcher to study grandparent culture in Alaska, or spent on rehab for wounded warriors returning from Afghanistan. Well ask Charlie Rangel about that. He voted for the program that funded the grandparent research – and the turtle tunnel – and the dance software – and that gave a Georgia Tech professor money he could use to pay jazz artists to jam with him.
Here’s where Charlie Rangel gets into this redistribution nonsense: “If we have the other 99 percent of the people who are not wealthy, and if it was possible for them to get a fair shake and have more expendable income, you wouldn’t have to put out ads for them to buy.” What? Is there some part of that which makes rational sense? I frankly don’t get it. Is Rangel saying that if people had more money to spend retailers wouldn’t have to buy advertising to promote their products? That’s what a life in politics gets you.
Someone send the memo to Charlie Rangel: It’s not your money. Money earned by rich Americans does not belong to the government, and it certainly is not the place of Charlie Rangel to decide who gets to spend that money. But for some reason, Democrats are under this false assumption that money in the hands of the 99% will be better spent than the people who actually earned the income. We do not live in a Marxist society whereby we distribute wealth from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. This is a capitalist, free-market economy that rewards talent, hard work and responsibility … those with more of these qualities will acquire more wealth. This concept drives Libtards bonkers.
But Charlie Rangel wasn’t the only one touting Marxist dogma on the House floor. Democrat Rep Chris Murphy of Connecticut stood up after Charlie Rangel and argued that the United States is not broke. Nope. The problem is that we aren’t taxing the wealthy. He says, “Despite what you hear on TV, despite what you hear on Fox News today, taxes as a percentage of GDP today are at a 60-year low.” I’m not really sure where Mr. Murphy is getting his statistics, but I have some stats of my own using IRS statistics …
During this era of ubiquitous tax cuts, income tax receipts from the top 1% of income earners rose to 3.3% of GDP in 2007 (the latest year for which we have data) from 1.5% of GDP in 1978. Income tax receipts from the bottom 95% of income earners fell to 3.2% of GDP from 5.4% of GDP over the same time period.” If you want to go back even further in history, tax receipts for the top 1% were 1% of GDP in 1940. Even further back, in 1928, they were 1.1% of GDP. Oh, so you noticed the drop in share of GDP? What happened between 1928 and 1940? The government tried to climb its way out of the Great Depression by soaking the rich. It raised top marginal income tax rates from 24% to 83%. Not only did this manage to drop the percentage of income paid to the government, but it managed to shrink the GDP as well! With higher tax rates, rich people paid less to the government and the entire economy suffered. That’s liberal economics at work.
Now remember that these marginal rates in the 1920s and 1940s are different than the effective rates paid by taxpayers. The fact is that even though we are not paying marginal rates in the 80% range, our effective tax rates are at record levels: “The effective tax rate paid by the rich has actually gone up in recent years, and now averages roughly 24 percent, compared with an average of 11 percent for all taxpayers.”
And for all of those who believe that the solution to our woes is to return to the Clinton-era tax rates by repealing the Bush tax cuts, consider this: “The top 1 percent, the 1-5 percent, and the 5-10 percent all have a heavier burden under Bush’s tax rates than under Clinton’s rates while the 10-25 percent, 25-50 percent, and bottom 50 percent all have a lighter burden under Bush’s tax rates than under Clinton’s rates.”
And while we are on the subject of the 1% … the latest data from the Tax Foundation found that those millionaires and billionaires – I’m talking the top one-tenth of 1% of taxpayers – approximately 100,000 folks who are earning nearly 8% of the income but paying an enormous 17% of all income taxes.
Here are some facts for Charlie Rangel and Chris Murphy to consider. Inequality is, in fact, declining. We have 39% fewer millionaires in America since 2007. The top 1% of taxpayers were earning 20% of the income in 2008. That figure has now dropped to 16.9%. Maybe THAT would explain why the federal government feels like rich people aren’t paying enough to government … because they are simply earning less than they were before. So is the solution to tax them MORE? Obviously not. I’ve already demonstrated what happens when you soak the rich in our economic situation. As this article in National Review by Michael Tanner points out, “the decline in earnings by the rich has corresponded with higher unemployment and rising poverty overall. We are all poorer, but at least we are more equally poor. Hooray.”
U.S. Constitutional Free Press 