Thursday, September 23, 2010

starting on the first of never

I recently heard our dear Leader speaking the other day, complaining that keeping our current taxation rates at their current level for the wealthiest people will cost the U.S. Government 700 Billion dollars. These are the people who own businesses and provide jobs for the rest of us.  If we accept this 700 Billion figure as true, then it follows that raising the tax rates on these people to their pre-Bush levels will cost the private sector of our economy 700 Billion dollars.  I think that the private sector has suffered quite enough in this downturn, and the government sector has suffered not at all.

One problem with a progressive income tax is that there is, built in to the underlying assumptions of it, the idea that a person who makes less money needs what money he does have more than the person who makes much more money.  May be this sounds like common sense to you, it did to me before I really thought about it, and thought about what it implies.  To see the moral corruption one must first examine the premise behind this axiom, mainly that a person's "needs" can be evaluated by anyone other than that person.  Only the person in question has the most up to date and through information for determining this.

I don't even entertain arguments that somehow "needs" can be determined by a majority vote.  It is a fact as to whether or not a person has a particular need, and facts are determined by reality, not democracy.  Much like the ratio of a circle's circumference to diameter is a fact, and no vote in the Indiana General Assembly can alter it.

To argue that "progressive" taxation rates are compassionate is to attribute compassion to the act of reaching into a pocket that is not one's own. To assert this is to cheapen genuine acts of compassion and charity.

A "progressive" tax can only be seen as moral if you accept the premise that someone's needs can be determined in advance by someone else, AND you accept the premise that this person making the determination is justified in taking the "unneeded surplus" from whomever is determined to have more than his "fair share."

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