Until the Last Cent is Gone
Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden want your cash and your property - and any of your future gains right now.
Against all factual data, the left screams “America is a rich nation! We aren’t broke! Budgets do not matter!”
They make these claims because they truly believe that there will be funding until the last cent is gone and until the last person who has any ability to create value is taxed at a 100% rate. They assume that people will just continue to send in rubles “for the good of the country” and all they must do is keep on spending. That is why they level such vitriol at any fiscal conservatives because the basis of this movement is the antithesis of their beliefs.
For a long time, I have watched in amazement at local government officials grabbing for federal funds for inane uses like bike paths and museums of limited local interest, federal officials ignoring budgets (or in the case of last year, just refusing to have one) and elected representatives refusing to cut spending (actually continuing to propose new spending) in the face of crushing debt and budget deficits of historic proportions. In 99.9% of the money grabs, there was never a concern for where the money is truly coming from.
I find the campaign pitches of candidates who brag about “bringing money home to the district” offensive and distasteful because they promote and mainstream the idea that the government is a magical piggy bank and all we have to do is put on our ruby slippers, click our heels three times and all of our wishes will come true – we will be showered in OPM (Other People’s Money). It promotes the idea that the sweet, sweet government money originates from a faceless entity called “big government”, not from the sweat, labor, innovation of productive individuals in this country, people who are willing to take risks in starting and running a business.
We all know that the upper 50% of taxpayers pay something like 97.5% of all income taxes and the top 25% pay the lion’s share at roughly 87% of all income taxes. Rational people know that corporate taxes are business costs that are passed through to consumers in the prices of the goods and services. Liberals see this as just an indictment that the top has all the money, therefore they must pay more.
It is simple math to understand that a confiscation of every asset of the Fortune top 400 richest people in America would not even cover government spending for a year – even less now that our national debt topped 35 trillion dollars and is increasing by a trillion every 100 days that pass.
If you take the long view of this debate, you know this is not about taxes.. What we are seeing from the American left is an open assault on one of the cornerstones of freedom – the ownership of private property.
It really isn’t just about money. It would be far easier to manage if it were. Money is just a representation of what you own; a dollar bill is just as much private property as a house, a tract of land or a car. The only difference is that “money” is fungible – it can be easily transferred, transported, and is universally accepted as a medium of exchange during the conduct of commerce. It is also far less personal and intimate than a house, personal belongings, or land that a family lives on, farms or otherwise enjoys. These two things, being easily transferred and less intimate are essential in efficient economic transactions but those are also significant downsides – it makes it far easier to confiscate (see the Current Tax Payment Act of 1943).
And now the Democrats want to tax your unrealized gains. They have wanted a wealth tax for decades, this is that – and guess what? If your paper gains turn to losses, you aren’t getting money back. They essentially want to tax cash flow.
Compare and contrast these quotes:
“The theory of Communism may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”
~ Karl Marx
“We are socialists, we are enemies of today’s capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are determined to destroy this system under all conditions.”
~ Adolph Hitler
“What’s happened is that we’ve allowed the vast majority of that cash to be concentrated in the hands of just a few people, and they’re not circulating that cash. They’re sitting on the money. That’s not theirs, that’s a national resource, that’s ours. We all have this… we all benefit from this, or we all suffer as a result of not having it.”
~ Fat Slob Michael Moore
See the similarities?
Do not be fooled. While the American left screams in faux pain and disgust when they are accurately tagged as socialists/Marxists/communists, they are without question following a path to confiscation of private property (wealth) for the purposes of redistribution of wealth according to their desires. The inconsistency of their positions to the concept of individual freedom is stark – while their alignment with Marx’s Communist Manifesto is legion. Most claim the intellectual and moral high ground and I don’t believe they even realize that they are Communists, and that communism is the enemy of freedom. This is apparently the depth and breadth of the “groupthink” that passes for intellectual curiosity in academia these days. They are the modern incarnation of Lenin’s “useful idiots”.
Contrast the quotes above with these:
By Liberty I understand the Power which every Man has over his own Actions, and his Right to enjoy the Fruits of his Labour, Art, and Industry, as far as by it he hurts not the Society, or any Members of it, by taking from any Member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys. The Fruits of a Man’s honest Industry are the just Rewards of it, ascertained to him by natural and eternal Equity, as is his Title to use them in the Manner which he thinks fit: And thus, with the above Limitations, every Man is sole Lord and Arbitrer of his own private Actions and Property.
~ Cato the Elder
The constitutions of most of our states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property and freedom of the press.
~ Thomas Jefferson
Capitalism is not only a better form of organizing human activity than any deliberate design, any attempt to organize it to satisfy particular preferences, to aim at what people regard as beautiful or pleasant order, but it is also the indispensable condition for just keeping that population alive which exists already in the world. I regard the preservation of what is known as the capitalist system, of the system of free markets and the private ownership of the means of production, as an essential condition of the very survival of mankind.
~ F.A.Hayek
Our very freedoms are based on the idea of private property ownership, of having control over our personal space to do with as we please. The Founders thought it was so important that it is enshrined in the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution – no person shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”.
Private property includes our money.
Bernie Sanders and his ilk believe our tax system, the most progressive in the world, needs “fixing” but they have no rights to any of our property or money. His side believes the government owns every last cent and has the right to redistribute it.
Time to decide which side you are on.
The poor tend to be the useful idiots. They make sympathetic cases because they're poor. Also, college kids who don't know any better and who have no skin in the game - yet. Idiots who are useful to the cause. The wealthy who espouse socialist ideas are a level beyond useful - but their motivation is that THEIR wealth won't be confiscated, so long as they hold the "right" ideas. Somewhere between these two monsters is the great American middle class - who heaved themselves up off of a lower rung on the ladder and have achieved some modicum of security. Perhaps a subject for another column, but the wealthy and the poor have conspired to strip out the future of the middle class.
Similar to the way property taxes are assessed, progressives want to tax the individual based on presumed and unaccessed value.