Obama Tries Again to Spread the Wealth Around
By Leslie Carbone | Monday, September 19th, 2011 | Culture, Policy, PoliticsInvoking the phrase “fair share” over and over again–as though repetition made it meaningful if not truthful–a smug President Barack Obama today at the White House touted his latest effort to spread the wealth around, a scheme that The Wall Street Journal expects will cost Americans $1.5 Trillion in higher taxes.
Insisting “it’s … about fairness. It’s about whether we are, in fact, in this together, and we’re looking out for one another,” the POT(57)US painted a picture less of a Constitutional republic of individuals and more of an enormous cult compound where all wealth created by members is owned and controlled by a board of elders who use it to coddle and control whom they choose (after grabbing a share for themselves).
As America’s century-long experiment in Progressivism has shown, this view is practically unworkable, as well as judicially and morally perverse. Life isn’t fair, and governments are not established to manufacture fairness but to maintain justice by securing rights–including the right to property. When a government seizes honestly earned wealth, skims a chunk for its own, and redistributes the rest in the form of acknowledged welfare programs, the welfare-lite of make-work jobs programs, or anything else that robs Peter to pay Paul, it misuses for injustice the power that it has been granted to enforce justice. It also perverts morality–punishing Peter for the virtuous behavior that creates honest wealth and rewarding Paul for the envy and arrogance that assert entitlement to what someone else has earned.
Fittingly, these perversions suffocate, rather than inflate, prosperity. High marginal taxes suppress saving, investment, job creation, and wage growth. President Obama seems to live in Progressive Politician’s Paradise, where big government’s damage to prosperity results in greater power for big government. But the Fatally Conceited demagogue may be a century too late to hope in that. We’ve tried rewarding government for punishing prosperity. The results have been predictable–more government, less prosperity. It’s time for the President and pandering politicians like him to learn that government is not too big to fail.
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About the author
Leslie Carbone is the author of "Slaying Leviathan: The Moral Case for Tax Reform" (Potomac, 2009). Her writing has appeared in magazines including "The Weekly Standard" and "The American Enterprise", in newspapers from "The Philadelphia Inquirer" to "The San Francisco Chronicle", and on Web sites like "BreakPoint" and "National Review Online". She has appeared on more than 200 radio and television talk shows, been quoted in national newspapers including "The Wall Street Journal" and "USA Today", and spoken at venues across the United States from Tea Parties to college campuses, including Northwestern University, UCLA, and Cornell University. Ms. Carbone has served as Chief-of-Staff to the late Assemblyman Gil Ferguson of California, Executive Director of Accuracy In Academia, Director of Family Tax Policy at Family Research Council, Senior Writer at Koch Industries, Inc., and Speechwriter for former Secretary of Labor of the United States Elaine L. Chao.
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Comments
6 Responses to "Obama Tries Again to Spread the Wealth Around"
The poor man sadly was on vacation during those halcyon days when Harry Reid had the filibuster in his lockbox and Nancy Pelosi roamed the skies sipping something for her complexion. The poor poor man, Barack Obama was never tapped on the shoulder by his once trusty aides and advised that the road to triple taxation was now open and paved with IOUs. Perhaps another vacation will ease the pain.
Obama “math”: Billions in cuts will offset trillions in spending. Obama accounting: Solar panels that cost $8 to make and then sold for $3 – A $5 profit. Obama frequency justice: GPS frequencies should be shared with broadband so everyone can have wireless internet. Obama environmental justice: to many to list.
Good post, Leslie, but the train has already left the station. The welfare class has learned that they can retire on government safety net programs at a lower middle class standard of living instead of saving and investing. Meanwhile, companies have shrugged off defined benefit retirement plans onto the Federal government. Republican (small R) democracy can only endure until the worker class has learned that they can vote themselves better benefits from the public treasury than they can earn from their employer. After that, the country is in a slow death spiral of mounting taxation on less economic productivity. We are doomed.
Stick around long enough and the record will play the same ole song again. Ecclesiastes 1:9 The thing that has been–it is what will be again, and that which has been done is that which will be done again; and there is nothing new under the sun.
http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/commercials/1984/loopholes
Of course it has been the Bush tax policies that have created any perception of class warfare. Now, the richest 1% of households earn as much as the bottom 60%, the income inequality widened in the Great Recession, and the rich have been on the road to recovery for the last few years while the middle class jobs lost may never come back. Frankly, the last decade has witnessed the hollowing out of the middle class amidst trends that are profoundly reshaping our society, and true recovery will occur only if we change the path we are on. The President’s proposal aims to do just that while the republicans only want to create more dire circumstances by insisting on deeper cuts that will plunge us back into recession. They have doubled down on the same tactics that have produced our current fiscal mess. Despicable.
Mike,
You skipped over my post at the top apparently.
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