A standby of the Left is to ignore the problems of anyone with money, because any sympathy for anyone with more than $5 to their name is unacceptable.
This is why they support high taxes. They believe in the idea that money can buy happiness, that these people have bought it, and that they want it from them.
Which couldn’t be further from the truth. Rich people are more likely to be unhappy than poor people.
Studies show this phenomenon: “the wealthier the workers were, the less likely they were to display a strong capacity to savor positive experiences in their lives. Furthermore, simply being reminded of money (by being exposed to a picture of a huge stack of Euros) dampened their savoring ability.”
And of course, the lottery example: “People who had won between $50,000 and $1,000,000 (in 1970s dollars) were less impressed by life’s simple pleasures than people who experienced no such windfall.”
Consumption of the rich’s money to, in turn, feel their happiness, is a witchcraft all its own. So to see people guided by this principle in power and enacting policy is terrifying.
A recent AP article says:
The poor rich.
With Washington gridlocked again over whether to raise their taxes, it turns out wealthy families already are paying some of their biggest federal tax bills in decades even as the rest of the population continues to pay at historically low rates.
President Barack Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress say the wealthy must pay their fair share if the federal government is ever going to fix its finances and reduce the budget deficit to a manageable level.
A new analysis, however, shows that average tax bills for high-income families rarely have been higher since the Congressional Budget Office began tracking the data in 1979. Middle- and low-income families aren’t paying as much as they used to.
For 2013, families with incomes in the top 20 percent of the nation will pay an average of 27.2 percent of their income in federal taxes, according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a research organization based in Washington. The top 1 percent of households, those with incomes averaging $1.4 million, will pay an average of 35.5 percent.
Those tax rates, which include income, payroll, corporate and estate taxes, are among the highest since 1979.
And for this analysis, the AP article’s author must be crucified by Igor Volsky:
The Associated Press’ Stephen Ohlemacher is out with an article lamenting the tax burden levied on the richest Americans who are “paying some of their biggest federal tax bills in decades even as the rest of the population continues to pay at historically low rates.”
The piece, which seeks to contextualize the political debate surrounding the deficit in economic data, devotes its first eight paragraphs to “the poor rich,” characterizing the current tax structure as a great burden on higher income Americans. It’s not until paragraph 16 that Ohlemacher departs from the article’s opening premise to mention that the income gap between the rich and everyone else has exploded, helping to create the difference in tax rates.
First things first, the “inequality gap” is crap.
A new study shows that America’s so-called wealth gap is actually narrower than it was 15 years ago. And most of the growth in wealth inequality occurred in the 1980s – not in the 2000s.
A National Bureau of Economic Research paper by Edward N. Wolff, a New York University professor and one of the leading U.S. experts on wealth shares, shows that in 1998, the richest one percent of Americans owned 38.1 percent of the nation’s wealth. It has fallen fairly steadily since then to the current level of 35.4 percent.
So what’s the justification for raising taxes again?
The average family in the bottom 20 percent of households won’t pay any federal taxes. Instead, many families in this group will get payments from the federal government by claiming more in credits than they owe in taxes, including payroll taxes. That will give them a negative tax rate.
So there’s people who pay zero taxes, in fact they have negative taxes, and yet there are those who earn more and are paying at an increasing rate.
That makes sound economic sense. That’s going to get the economy back on track.
It’s almost as though the author is upset to learn of this simple explanation, for he immediately follows it up with a quote from a representative from the Heritage Foundation, who predictably argues that “raising taxes again on the wealthy would reduce their incentive to save and invest, hurting long-term economic growth.”
With that, the conventional wisdom is restored and Ohlemacher can tell his readers that raising revenue is a liberal solution that will hurt the rich, while tough spending cuts to entitlements and discretionary programs are necessary to stabilize the national debt.
Asking for more money from people who increasingly can no longer give is not a solution to stabilizing the national debt. Cutting an outrageously-inflated increase in spending is.
Think about it this way:
You start off as a student who gets a few expenses paid for by a wealthy uncle. He’s happy to give because he wants you to succeed. Soon, however, his payments are not enough, as your spending has increased. So you ask for a little more, and he gives a little more.
Eventually, you go from a college apartment to purchasing a small mansion, driving an old beater to a Bentley, eating leftovers to eating at the French Laundry. Your uncle keeps giving you money, and you keep spending, giving away to your friends because you simply have too much to spend all by yourself.
Your uncle finds out, and is outraged. How could he be expected to give more from his yearly income, which has now been significantly reduced from giving you so much, when you’re spending money unnecessarily? He asks you to cut back, and you become enraged, asking for more and threatening to sue if he doesn’t.
The Left wants you to ask for more. After all, he’s had nice things in his life, and he should give you money to have them too!
The Right wants you to cut back on spending. You’ve asked too much, you’ve worn out your welcome, and he’s going to cut you off completely, leaving you in a world of hurt.
Which path do you choose?
