Tag Archives: Redistribution of Wealth

Proper Use of the Tax Code

Taxes

I’m continuing to weed through my archived stack – came across this one regarding the tax code.

I’ve always been suspicious of those folks who try and use the tax code too achieve some sort of social change.  For example, we can raise taxes on the wealthier folks and then lower taxes on the less wealthier in an attempt to more evenly distribute wealth.

I think that’s bad policy – for two reasons.  One, we’ll never get it right, two, the whole process is wide open to corruption and three (okay – three), it is simply not okay for people to vote to steal money from one man to give to another.

Turns out I am not alone in my thinking:

President Obama believes the federal tax code should bolster the middle class and make the rich pay their fair share. I have a different view: The tax code should make no attempt to differentiate rich from middle-income taxpayers, nor should it attempt to redistribute wealth to middle-income taxpayers.

Right – exactly.  But can the government do anything?

Yes – undo what it’s already done!

Big banks, for example, earn undeserved profits because they are protected by too-big-to-fail policies along with myriad regulations that limit competition in financial services. Doctors and lawyers, too, make higher incomes than their talents alone would warrant because government licensing restricts entry and competition. Scientists and engineers earn excessive incomes because our misguided restrictions on high-skill immigration (the H1-B visa quota) exclude talented foreigners.

Sugar barons get rich because of government-imposed import quotas. Ethanol producers cash in because the government mandates the use of their product. The military industrial complex profits from government-facilitated sales to authoritarian regimes around the world.

In short, instead of making the tax code more complicated by implementing more redistribution, the president and Congress should stop redistributing wealth altogether. Then we can have a truly simplified tax code.

Amen!

Values

I think two things:

  1. If you have a lot of money and talent and don’t use that wealth and skill in order to make your community a better place you’re an asshole.
  2. If you steal money and property from those that have it in order to make your community a better place you’re an asshole, a thief and a dreamer.

Trade Offs

I’ve done a bit of reading in the last few weeks and have been on a “trade offs” kick.

So lemme ask ya.  Would you rather:

  1. Live in a place where there was more equity but people were poorer; that is the poorest ranked 2 out of 10 while the rich ranked 4 out of 10.
  2. Or, live in a place where there was less equity but everyone was wealthier; that is the poorest ranked 4 out of 10 but the wealthiest ranked 9 out of 10?

In the second case the wealthiest are not only more wealthy in terms of ratio; more than double the poorest, but they are more percentage points richer as well – 5 rather than just 2.

This is the fundamental choice before us.  There are those that think that we should be more equal, that the spoils of the rich should be more equitable to the spoils of the poorest among us.  And these people are willing to live in a world that is poorer in general, less advanced in general, in order to achieve this equity.

Then there are people would rather increase the overall prosperity of the world even if it meant that the wealthiest among us were astronomically rich.  Rich too the point that most of us couldn’t imagine.

Notice that in the example, the second option puts the poorest at the same level as the wealthiest in the first.

I’m for option #2.

You?

Are You Smarter Than A Six Year Old?

This evening I was with my kid and we stopped at the bank.  I had a check to deposit and then I needed some cash.

As we drove away from the drive through ATM the young lad asked me, “Daddy, how much money did you get?”  I replied, “One hundred dollars.”

He scrunched his little face and asked if that was 2 bills?  When I told  him that it wasn’t, rather five bills; $20 bills each.

He then asked if he could have one.  When I answered that, indeed, he couldn’t, he grew a little frustrated.  “But daddy, I don’t have ANY money and you would STILL have 80 bucks!  You would STILL have more money than I would.”

It struck me how parallel his argument is with the liberals in government.

On Why We MUST Fix Global Warming

This sums up my view of why the Left is so very critically concerned about the whole warming of the globe:

The solutions proposed by the left aim to leverage this problem to build the economic order they have failed to achieve by other means.

Exactly!

It would be easier to listen to the Liberal solution to this problem if it didn’t sound EXACTLY like the normal meme of taking resources from the evil rich and giving it to the victimized poor.

Now, go read the whole article.