Never mind that the current administration can't run our country; they have no hesitancy in telling everybody else how to run theirs. Now Hillary Clinton is trapsing around South America with a message for those countries' leaders; increase taxes on your rich.
Hillary Clinton shmoozing with leftist Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa
Here's what she said yesterday in Quito:
"...in many cases, it is a simple fact that the wealthy do not pay their fair share..." She then went on to tell the South Americans that they must not allow the rich tax-evaders to escape higher taxes.
Ah yes, the old proverb about paying YOUR FAIR SHARE. I think it was Confucius who first coined that phrase, was it not? Or was it Karl Marx?
Quito was the second stop on Clinton's grand tour (after Panama).
After Ecuador, Clinton will take her tax message to Colombia and Barbados.
I have a tax simplification plan:
ReplyDeleteEveryone, from the newest burger-flipper at McDonald's to Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, get the first $20,000 tax free.
After that, we scale up to a tax on income over $1 million at a rate of 50%. Nobody ever walked away from a chance to make a million dollars because they would "only" get to spend half of it. As Paul Allen said, nobody earns, or deserves, the kind of money he made from being in on the ground floor of Microsoft.
In time of declared war, or direct attack in the United States, a war surtax will go into effect, consisting of one percent on ALL income under $100,000 (including all those otherwise exempt, because they make under $20,000), and 5% of all income above $200,000. Maybe 2-3% for income over $100,000 and under $200,000.
Yes, people with high incomes should pay very substantial taxes. We all paid for their wealth, in the difference between our wages and the prices we buy at. Further, their businesses depend in so many ways on government infrastructure, services, legal accommodations, etc. If the wealthy of South American paid their fair share, the case for American taxpayers to provide foreign aid to "their" impoverished populations would be greatly reduced.
I've heard that " ...We all paid for their wealth ..." notion before. It is the idea that the rich got rich off the labor of others or were lucky or somehow didn't deserve the wealth they earned.
ReplyDeleteUsually people on welfare have those views.... gimme some of that guy's money... he don't deserve it.
In my experience, rich people earn their dough. There is such a thing as meritocracy in this cruel world. It would be nice to have the rich support the rest of the world but then who would do the work? Who would create jobs and profits, and paychecks? It certainly won't be the parasites who want "equality" meaning take from the lucky undeserving rich and give it to the noble unlucky poor.
"Equality" is a European (French) notion ... not American. Ours is "equality of OPPORTUNITY" and the pursuit of happiness. We have all men are CREATED equal ... not all men should be made equal.
Passing out benefits to all for the sake of equality gets you to the same welfare state as Greece and a lot of the other European countries.
Usually its the people who work for a living who have a sense that those with extreme wealth stole it from the rest of us. I know most people at any private sector job I have worked at feel that way. "For every dollar the moss has and didn't WORK for, one of us WORKED for a dollar and didn't get it" --Big Bill Haywood, a genuine WORKING American.
ReplyDeleteThere are exceptions: the man who built a business from nothing, devoted his entire life to it, sold it when he neared retirement age for a considerable sum, then parcelled out one million dollars to EACH employee (I assume employees who had put it some years). He knew that without their work, he wouldn't have had those millions, and he had plenty left over for himself. Would that all people with wealth looked at it like that.
We don't need to be perfectly EQUAL, but from those to whom much has been given, much is expected. Wealth is not all a matter of "opportunity."
Gary, last I checked, the highest tax bracket is around 33%. Pre-Reagan, it ran as high a 77%, which I don't have a problem with, but I'll settle for 50%. Keep in mind that Bill Gates only pays 10% of his first $8750 of taxable income, just like the rest of us.
Nobody noticed this, but under the simple plan I proposed, when we go to war, we all pay for it. We don't pretend we can fight a war while lowering taxes, we don't send the troops out to risk their lives, then short-change them on armour.