Governments are empowered to tax for limited and legitimate functions. Not to “spread the wealth around.”
“It’s not that I want to punish your success…and I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”
The President Barrack Obama to Samuel Joseph “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher
10/12/08
I posted this meme on my Facebook page recently and got this retort from a friend,
“Duh – taxes are redistribution of wealth. You need a pic of Trump’s 7.8T deficit ass up here because he not only took more money in 4 years; he then left you with more debt. Prove Me Wrong “
I don’t have to prove he’s wrong. He’s wrong. He’s a liberal.
On a more serious note, he’s missed (or possibly is just putting forward a false idea) a very serious fact. Taxes are not for redistribution of wealth. They are not redistribution of anything. They are there to fund the legitimate functions of government.
My source for such a radical thought? Encyclopedia Brittanica (emphasis mine):
Taxation is the imposition of compulsory levies on individuals or entities by governments in almost every country of the world. Taxation is used primarily to raise revenue for government expenditures, though it can serve other purposes as well.
I would direct my friend to a document he’s shown limited knowledge of in past discussions, the Constitution of the United States of America. I’ve reviewed the text and I’ve yet to see the work redistribution. In the Preamble I do see a few things listed, “in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessing of liberty…”
Going through the seven articles, I do not see anything about reallocation of the wealth of citizens. I do see in Article I Congress is authorized to “have Power To lay and collect Taxes (Dims love that one)…To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;…To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years…”
So, again, where does the power to “redistribute” come from? Must be right next to the right to taxpayer funded abortion and sex changes for minor children. On a more serious note, my friend is just taken with this belief that my money must be redistributed by the political class, who of course are much wiser about spending my money than I am.
By the way, the US doesn’t tax wealth, it taxes earned income, be it salary, capital gains, etc. Warren Buffet famously said he paid less in income taxes than his secretary. Mr. Buffet’s salary has been $100,000 annually since 1980 (worth just over $38,000 today). His secretary is paid an annual salary of two to three hundred thousand dollars a year (my mom was a secretary for years and never got that much!).
Mr. Buffet, like many multi-billionaires, doesn’t make money from salary. He gets between four and six billion (yes, with a “b”) dollars in stock dividends annually from his investment company Berkshire Hathaway. Another example is Rick Kinder, Executive Chairman of Kinder Morgan, the country’s largest energy pipeline company. Depending on the year he’s Houston’s richest man, worth around eleven billion dollars. His annual salary is one dollar. Just like Mr. Buffet, he makes his money in stock dividends that are taxed differently than income.
Remember that next time a Democrat says multibillionaires like Buffet are not paying taxes. Or why they don’t want to tax rich liberals like him at higher rates, or end the massive tax dodge of chartable foundations? Could it be they write massive checks to them and their causes?
As far as the 7.8 trillion dollars in debt during the Trump administration, as usual, my friend is off. It was 8.18 trillion. Good hunks of that were from Covid relief and a budget plan he agreed to with the Dems. I’ll be the first to say Trump was very bad on the budget (the border, Iran and Russia were much better than Obama I, II, or III).
My friend might want to open his eyes over the last three- and one-half years. Dementia Joe O’Biden’s administration has added 6.17 trillion in just over three years. Or remember it was during the Obama I administration US debt became larger than the gross domestic product, and for the first time in history we lost one of our three AAA credit ratings (the next time was Obama IIIs, aka Dementia Joe’s term).
The point of all this? The federal budget is out of control and the Democrats have no intention of fixing it. It’s a pox on both houses, the GOP has a sizable portion of its members not interested in doing their Constitutionally mandated function either. Just pass a continuing resolution (and allow them to pack it with trillions in pork), not give anyone time to read it, and go onto the next continuing resolution.
But the Democrats are filled with radicals who think all wealth is Washington’s and has a base that “thinks” rich people don’t pay taxes. Plus people who pay billions yearly in taxes are not paying their “fair share,” but can’t define that that is. Ten percent? Twenty-five? Forty?
Before the Dems (and a fair number of RINOs) can be taken seriously, they need to get a clue. First of which is, government is not there for redistribution of the wealth of its citizens. It’s there to perform select limited government functions, that the people or the states cannot do. That is the core issue.
Michael A. Thiac is a retired Army intelligence officer, with over 23 years experience, including serving in the Republic of Korea, Japan, and the Middle East. He is also a retired police patrol sergeant, with over 22 years’ service, and over ten year’s experience in field training of newly assigned officers. He has been published at The American Thinker, PoliceOne.com, and on his personal blog, A Cop’s Watch.
Opinions expressed are his alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of current or former employers.
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