Engaging with a liberal about 'fairness' | Nealz Nuze | www.boortz.com

Engaging with a liberal about 'fairness'

By Neal Boortz

If you try engaging in a conversation about taxes with a liberal, you can expect for your conversation to last less than one minute. This is because the only argument that liberals have about raising taxes is fairness.

Forgive me for my abject ignorance, but I just can’t shake this idea that the purpose of taxation is to raise the revenue that is needed to fund the essential and constitutionally appropriate functions of government. The left goes further – much further – with this. They view the power to tax – the power to seize property from an individual citizen at the point of a gun – as the power to reorder a free society to more closely mirror their ideas and desires. This is why these social engineers will always start bleating about “fairness” When progs start talking about fairness any chance for rational discussion is out the window.

Two points:

#1: What is considered “fair” and who gets to define it?

Let’s start with the first part: what would you consider fair? Most liberals cannot tell you how much the evil rich earn compared to what they pay in taxes. The answer, by the way, is that the top 1% of taxpayers earn about 20% of the income, yet they pay close to 40% in taxes. Doesn’t matter. To your friendly neighborhood prog, that just isn’t enough. And the fact that almost 51% of wage earners pay no federal income taxes at all? Is this considered fair? Should these people be getting a completely free ride? A liberal will probably stutter and stammer and try to avoid answering the question. So you give them a break. Progs also can’t give you specific number on how much the evil rich need to pay in order for our tax system to be fair. They are just certain that it is more than they’re paying now. And never forget --- it is not for you to determine just how much money you can earn and keep. That’s up to the government. Remember that is was our Dear Ruler who said, “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”

During Obama’s presser yesterday we heard one of the most absurd and dangerous quotes I’ve ever heard from a president. Well … a president of the United States yesterday. Here’s the quote:

I do not want, and I will not accept, a deal in which I am asked to do nothing, in fact I’m able to keep hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional income that I don’t need, while a parent out there who is struggling to send their kid to college suddenly finds that they’ve got a couple thousand dollars less in grants or student loans.

Asked to do nothing? Oh .. I see. So we’re all supposed to be sitting around just waiting for our orders from the Imperial Federal Government. “What do you want me to do today, Dear Ruler?” The fact is that the best thing any citizen can do is to strive to be a self-reliant and independent citizen who is not running to the federal government for help every day of their life.

But let’s deal with this “I’m able to keep hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional income that I don’t need.” “ABLE TO KEEP?” Are you kidding me? Do you understand the underlying premise of this argument? That amazing statement belies a belief that everything Obama – or any other citizen earns – actually belongs to the government, and it is the political class and government bureaucrats who will decide just how much of those earnings each individual will be “able to keep.” Your wealth is to be determined by government, not by your own initiative, hard work and good decision-making. Consider the “don’t need” part of Obama’s statement. Just who gets to decide how much of what you earn you “need?” Can anyone make that choice except you? Well, not in a free society. But this is the Obama Society where government discovers how much you have earned, then decides what you “need” and then comes to a decision as to what you will be “able to keep.”

Karl Marx would be so proud of Barack Obama.

#2: Increasing taxes does not mean increasing revenue.

And the converse is true as well; decreasing taxes does not necessarily mean a decrease in revenue. The history books show countless examples of tax revenues increasing when tax rates decline. Let’s just take the Bush tax cuts as an example. These liberals love to scream about the Bush tax cuts costing us billions of dollars! The fact is that revenues actually increased after the Bush tax cuts went into effect in 2003. The Heritage Foundation has the facts: “Tax revenues in 2006 were 18.4 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), which is actually above the 20-year, 40-year, and 60-year historical averages. The inflation-adjusted 20 percent tax revenue increase between 2004 and 2006 represents the largest two-year revenue surge since 1965-1967.” On a more macro scale, “Since 1952, the highest marginal income tax rate has dropped from 92 percent to 35 percent, and tax revenues have grown in inflation-adjusted terms while remaining constant as a percent of GDP.” In other words, revenues are not about increasing tax rates … they are about economic growth: producing more and/or creating new tax payers. Here are some more historical examples for your liberal friends to chew on. Or take capital gains taxes. What if I told you that historically, as capital gains tax rates dropped, revenues from the tax increased? Conversely, in the 1980s when the rate was increased to 28%, revenues went down. So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected? Oh wait, someone has asked that question before. It was Charlie Gibson, who asked that question to Barack Obama in 2008. Barack Obama’s response: “Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.” You can’t argue with logic like that.