Soak The Rich? No, Get Rid of The Poor
Class warfare may be a good campaign strategy, but only if you are counting on STUPIDS to get you elected. Anyone with reasonable intelligence should see through the idiocy in such campaign chicanery. Accept for the moment, my first two statements about which more shall be said later. For an approximation of the number of stupid people in the electorate, let’s use Bernard Goldberg’s summary of a Gallup Survey:
According to Gallup, while 80 percent of Republicans think the country benefits from having a class of wealthy Americans, and while 59 percent of independents feel that way, a measly 52 percent of Democrats agree that the United States benefits from the rich. And here’s the number that is so fascinating (and I mean that word in the worst possible sense): 46 percent of Democrats — no doubt the most liberal in the party — say the country does not benefit from having wealthy people around.
The overall survey states that 63 percent of all Americans believe that the US benefits from having rich people. That is astounding. It doesn’t mean that the other 37% are stupid, but if one had to bet …. The breakdown by political affiliation above indicates that the Republicans are the dominant party in terms of intelligence with approximately 50% of Democrats qualifying for stupid using this metric.
To be fair, some of these people are probably only ignorant and not truly stupid. But they vote and impose their ignorance/stupidity on the rest of us.
Mr. Goldberg lays out what would happen to government revenues if there were no rich:
Let’s remember that the top 1 percent of working Americans pay about 40 percent of all federal income taxes, and the top 5 percent pay about 60 percent. So, without a class of rich folks, who would finance construction of interstate highways and pay for the military and help seniors with retirement income and the poor with medical care?
Not the bottom half of wage earners, since they pay only about 3 percent of all federal income tax.
The stupidity that is required to assume the rich are a problem should be readily apparent, I would hope, to anyone reading this site. The rich literally are paying for our morbidly obese government. Suppose we got rid of the so-called top 1%. Government revenues would shrink by 40% which means the deficit would increase by a Trillion dollars. Suppose we got rid of the top 50%. Then government revenues would shrink by over $2.5 Trillion, raising the annual deficit to near $4 Trillion.
Losing tax revenue would only be a part of the country’s problems. The so-called rich are employers and owners of capital assets. Presumably they would take their assets with them when they left the country. Confiscating these assets wouldn’t change much because there would be no entrepreneurial and managerial talent left to run whatever was left of the economy. Unemployment would skyrocket over 50% and incomes would plummet as what jobs remained, if any, would be low tech and service related.
Disliking and blaming the rich may make one feel good, however removing them, either physically or through the tax code, would destroy the country. The source of dislike of the rich is envy, one of the seven deadly sins. It appears to be a mainstay of Obama’s campaign strategy as he has little else to run on. Stirring up hatred and envy tears the country apart rather than uniting it. If Obama is successful, the country will be filled with John Galts, all looking to leave or retire. It will not be worthwhile staying for the true producers of the nation. It will not be worthwhile staying for the job seekers because available jobs will shrink in proportion to the capital fleeing the country.
At the risk of alienating the stupid and ignorant and the piously politically correct, let me suggest a different approach to getting our finances and government in line. Get rid of the bottom 50% of the country. This would have virtually no effect on government revenues. Among the benefits:
- It would eliminate all welfare and most entitlement programs and hosts of government employees. There would be no need for the programs or those who purportedly “manage” these programs.
- Government spending could be slashed by 70% since the so-called rich (I prefer to call them “productive) have no need for these services/programs. Tax revenues would still approximate $2.5 Trillion but government spending would drop to around $1.0 Trillion.
- Overnight government insolvency would be solved! Overnight the country would become more productive. Taxes could be cut by 50% rather than raised and the budget would be in surplus.
- Politicians would no longer be able to buy votes by creating dependents. The ballot box would better reflect judgments regarding ability to govern rather than “gimme more.”
By “getting rid of” I am not necessarily advocating deportation or some other extreme means. Merely doing away with all entitlements would produce the same result.
Am I dreaming? Of course, but it helps to put the nonsense of class warfare into perspective. Non-liberals should be allowed to be as crazy as liberals.
bigmike
david yard
RICHARD RALPH ROEHL
What a myopic, false, misleading, self serving piece of garbage this article is…. Removing the lowest 50% of wealth holders would leave no one to actually do the work the rich need done! Who would fix the roads, build new buildings, serve us at restaurants, baby sit the children, clean, make, build, and maintain everything??? The rich??? What a joke. Yes, if we kicked out the rich and allowed them to take the wealth with them, things would be problematic. But if The wealth were divided up and distributed back to to the people the rich stole from…. Spending would go up, tax collection would increase, 99% of the people would feel happier, appreciated, not ripped off, they would be healthier, better educated and all of this would lead to a stronger happier nation.
Wealth above the common worker is one thing, the obscene collection of wealth at the decimation of the rest of the country if abhorrent.
The rich are often referred to as the ” risk takers” in business, again, what a bunch of BS! How many rich people are killed, maimed, and abused at work? How many lose and arm, get poisoned, die in a chemical explosion?…. It’s the workers that take the real risks for the betterment of the rich, and as a thank you, the rich steal pensions, 401k”s, homes, mortgages, etc.