The Politics of Envy. Robert Reich, tweeted on March 4th,
“If Elon Musk can afford to lose $1.9 billion in a single day, he can afford a wealth tax”
Robert Reich was the diminutive Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton.
Bernie Sanders tweeted on the 5th
“You work hard, start a business, make some money, fine, become rich! But do you really need $50 or $100 BILLION? That is more money than you could spend in one lifetime. Should the wealthy in this country finally begin to pay their fair share? You’re damn right”
The Democrats are consumed by the politics of envy. Robert Reich is worth $5 million, not a lot considering he’s 76, but not bad considering his entire life he’s been in “public service” jobs. He never worked for private industry, certainly never started a business or tried to meet a payroll, but he does pull down about $400K a year.
Senator Sanders is worth about $3 Million, but his Senate salary is about $174K a year. His entire adult life has been in politics.
On March 6th, the Wall Street Journal reported that in 2020, the top 1% of earners paid 42% of the income tax collected in 2020, despite earning less than 25% of the adjusted gross income. If you look at the top 5% of wage earners they paid 62.7% of all income taxes but made 38.1% of the income. The top 5% make a wage of about $342K so they certainly paid more than their “fair” share.
Mr. Reich is concerned about Elon Musk who paid in over $11 Billion in income taxes in 2020, the largest single US tax bill in history. In addition, Elon Musk’s companies employ over 110K thousand people, all of whom pay income taxes. Stockholders in Musks’s companies also pay capital gains taxes on their shares. That is a lot of boring numbers to say that Reich and Sanders are off base.
The top 1% of earners are paying more than their “fair” share (a nebulous term that allows Democrats to claim the high road despite never defining what is “fair” for a taxpayer). President Biden continues to rail and tweet about making billionaires pay their “fair” share too. President Biden served 47 years in public life, he reports a net worth of about $8 million, but earned $17 million during the four years he was out of public service.
President Biden, Senator Sanders and Mr. Reich are envious of Elon Musk’s success. They want you to think he became the richest man in the world because of government subsidies and infrastructure. I’m not going to pretend that Elon Musk is a rags to riches story, but he took a lot of risks and made some very difficult decisions to get to the point he is now.
Biden, Sanders and Reich want you to think Musk is guilty of gluttony, one of the seven deadly sins, but Musk doesn’t sit on his fortune and try to spend it like Senator Sanders suggests, he looks for ways to be innovative and find market niches he can exploit, like private space travel, electric vehicles or satellite based internet.
Biden, Sanders and Reich are guilty of the sin of envy, they look at Musk’s billions and pretend that they could spend that money better than Musk can. Which to me is also the sin of pride.
If you enjoyed this article, then please REPOST or SHARE with others; encourage them to follow AFNN. If you’d like to become a citizen contributor for AFNN, contact us at managingeditor@afnn.us
Truth Social: @AFNN_USA
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/afnnusa
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/2_-GAzcXmIRjODNh
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AfnnUsa
GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/AFNN_USA
Parler: https://parler.com/AFNNUSA
CloutHub: @AFNN_USA