It has been said on the campaign trail a couple of times now that those making over $250,000/year can “afford” to pay more in taxes. There are lots and lots of problems with this thinking. First among them is that the issue is not about what citizens can “afford,” but about what the government has a right to do with people’s money. Another issue is that this statement wrongly assumes that the government can utilize that money more effectively than the individual who earned it. We’ll talk about these things more in future posts on making good decisions in the economic and political realms. (In the meantime, I highly recommend Thomas Sowell’s Basic Economics 3rd Ed: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy.)
But if we want to talk about fairness, Hugh Hewitt made an excellent point last Friday in his post on Obama’s plan to “share the wealth:”
What Obama doesn’t understand is that behind every small business that gets to the level he where he wants to slam new taxes on it, are years and sometimes decades of hard work and low, if any, profits, deferred dreams, and large debts that need to be paid from today’s success as well as tomorrow’s retirement plan to fund.