How Much Do You Actually Gain From Soaking The Rich ?

Fox News has a video posted showing President Obama stating in April of 2008 that, despite evidence it doesn’t increase revenue, he’d raise the capital gains tax on America’s richest Americans. Then-candidate Obama used one of his favorite words by saying it would be the “fair” thing to do! So it’s not really about revenue–it’s about redistributing wealth–taking money away from people who have earned it and giving it to people who have not earned it. How does that make our society better?

Then there was the ‘Buffett Rule’–the idea of taxing the rich just because we can. President Obama has repeatedly stated that putting a surtax on millionaires would balance the federal budget and restore “fairness” to the tax system.  Yesterday Hot Air ran the numbers on the Buffett Rule to see what the result would be of imposing higher taxes on millionaires.

The article reports:

A bill designed to enact President Barack Obama’s plan for a “Buffett rule” tax on people earning more than $1 million a year would rake in just $31 billion over the next 11 years, according to an estimate by Congress’ official tax analysts obtained by The Associated Press. That would be a drop in the bucket of the over $7 trillion in federal budget deficits projected during that period.

Just to put this in perspective, here are Obama’s budget-projection deficits for the next four years, from the CBO using Obama’s rose-colored glasses economic scenarios:

  • FY 2012 (current year) – $1.3 trillion
  • FY 2013 – $977 billion
  • FY 2014 – $702 billion
  • FY 2015 – $539 billion
  • FY 2016 – $529 billion

That $3 billion per year amounts to:

  • 0.23% of the FY2012 deficit
  • 0.31% of the FY2013 deficit
  • 0.43% of the FY2014 deficit
  • 0.56% of the FY2015 deficit
  • 0.57% of the FY2016 deficit

This is not about raising revenue. This is about punishing those of us who are successful. That is not the recipe for a thriving economy.

 

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