I'm watching the cries of anguish coming from the politicos on the left about the unfairness and unwise fiscal consequences of not raising income taxes on the "rich." The anguished cries would have a bit more credibility if they were advocating raising income taxes on everyone, not just "the other guy."
I'm always surprised that the "tax the rich" folks don't seem to have any sense of the moral and ethical aspects of taxing the other guy to spend as they see fit. Maybe they'd have a better feeling for it if we made the following proposal to them:
Depending on how you run the numbers, somewhere between 65% and 80% of all federal tax revenues go to making transfer payments, i.e., social security, medicare, medicaid, etc. So, as a practical matter, the business of the federal government is collecting money from the few and distributing it to the many. Rather than wasting money on massive bureaucracies to do that, let's eliminate the middle man. In most cities and suburbs and rural areas, everyone knows who has the money. Let's set aside one day a year when all the people who want the money go knocking on the doors of the people who have the money, and make them cough up whatever the seekers demand. We could get rid of hundreds of thousands of federal workers, who might actually find productive jobs. Then the federal government would shrink back to just being the government, i.e., focusing on the military, foreign affairs, managing federal lands, etc.
Am I Jonathan Swift?
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