In O'Reilly's obnoxious Super Bowl interview with Obama, Bill asked contemptuously if the president was a "wealth redistributionist." Between interruptions, Obama bobbed and weaved skillfully enough, but he couldn't risk the distorted headlines had he pointed out that the wealth has already been redistributed, upward, from the middle class to the idle class. Statistics vary depending on whom you ask and how you measure, but basically the top 1% of the country used to have 9% of the wealth (around 1970) and now they own around 22% of it. And the income growth of the teeny-tiny sliver at the top has been prodigious. The Forbes 12 richest Americans alone -- give or take a billion -- are worth about $300 billion collectively.
$300 billion is $1,000 for every person in America. It's $2,000 for each worker in the labor force. So if you make $24,000 a year, that's one month of your income so just 10 families can have more money than they can ever possibly spend. (If we had a 90% tax rate, as there was under that uber-leftist Eisenhower, that'd go rather far toward plugging the deficit while still leaving these 12 folks an average of $2.5 billion each. If I packed my own lunch, I think I could manage on 2 ½ billion -- couldn't you?)
Well, it may not be at a rate of 90%, but wealthy Americans do pay taxes. After lobbyists and loopholes, an average of around 17% of income -- as Warren Buffett points out, a lower tax rate than his secretary. (Let's not even talk about the corporations who come up with a tax liability of zero.) Considering what they get to keep, it's a paltry contribution.
The working and middle-class pay two sets of taxes. They pay visible state and federal taxes, and they pay an invisible tax to the very rich. All that money borrowed to finance deficit spending and unpaid wars? That's money you lay out instead of the wealthy, whose tax burden keeps shrinking as their share of national income keeps growing. That comes out of your pocket (via China, but eventually, you pay.)
There's nothing wrong with some people making more than others. It's human nature to want one's enterprise and hard work rewarded, and the profit motive does motivate. But when a single, working mother living in the Northeast can't get her apartment heated next winter because Wealthy Walton #4's tax lawyer figured out a way for him to avoid paying another $40 million in taxes, that's not just inhumane, it's insane.
The last I looked, the Constitution does not guarantee the right to accumulate beyond reason. The Declaration of Independence does enshrine the ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, but in what universe is happiness available to someone whose cancer is bankrupting him, or who lives under blankets in winter, or who has to stay with an abusive husband because she needs his health insurance for their children? Even if neither right is codified, when did "freedom to have" trump "freedom from want?" Or is that what they really mean by "American exceptionalism?"
And then we have the bizarre spectacle of half of the very richest people pleading for the other half to give it all away before they die, because -- they explain -- all that money only has meaning if you use it to improve the lives of others. Funny, when the government tries to do exactly that, it's called socialism. When the rich do it, it's called philanthropy. Is it just me, or is the real problem that so few have so much to give away in the first place?
The conservative Congressional fervor for draconian spending cuts (except defense spending, never defense spending!) is just more redistribution of wealth to the rich, who are continuing their grand tradition of de facto taxation without representation. The Tea Party is nothing more than a Trojan Horse for the wealthy and the powerful. These tricorned tricksters have far more in common with (Mad) King George than with George Washington.
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I agree that it does seem rather obscene for people's net worth to be in the hundreds of billions, but I give Bill Gates and others credit for using it for the greater good. The Gates Foundation is doing amazing things around the world when it comes to battling poverty and infectious disease, as well as promoting education. It may be a matter of "too little, too late," but I'd prefer to say it's "better late than never."