{"id":24421,"date":"2014-11-25T11:27:03","date_gmt":"2014-11-25T16:27:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=24421"},"modified":"2014-11-25T11:27:03","modified_gmt":"2014-11-25T16:27:03","slug":"it-may-seem-like-a-good-idea-but-does-it-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=24421","title":{"rendered":"It May Seem Like A Good Idea, But Does It Work?"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the new mantras of the political left is income inequality<\/a>. It is simply a crime that people who spent years becoming educated and learning things make considerably more money than those who didn’t. A college graduate has always made more money than a high-school graduate<\/a> (but that was back when people majored in subjects that included marketable skills–but that’s a whole different issue).<\/p>\n

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal<\/a> posted an editorial explaining how President Obama’s<\/a> efforts at wealth redistribution<\/a> have impacted the poor and middle class. In one sentence, higher taxes and redistribution policies have helped neither the poor nor the middle class.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

On taxes, Mr. Obama often claims that the rich don\u2019t pay their \u201cfair share,\u201d yet the most affluent one-fifth of taxpayers on average supplied 68.7% of federal revenue for 2011. That\u2019s according to the Congressional Budget Office<\/a>, which last week updated its statistics on the U.S. distribution of income and taxes for 2011 and preliminary calculations for last year.<\/strong><\/p>\n

As for the top 1%, they funded 24% of everything the government does in 2011. The CBO also estimates that the end-of-2012 fiscal cliff deal that lifted the top marginal income tax rate<\/a> to 39.6%, plus ObamaCare<\/a>\u2019s taxes on high-income individuals, increased their average federal taxes by 4.3 percentage points to 33.3% of income. The Warren Buffett <\/a> minimum-tax rule asserted that no millionaire should pay an effective tax below 30%. Mission accomplished.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So what has been the impact of the increase in taxes on the wealthy? The editorial reports that in 2011, two years after the recession was declared over, middle class income fell by 1.9% compared with 2007.<\/p>\n

The article concludes:<\/p>\n

The main lesson in these statistics is not about dependence on government. Rather, it is a verdict on Obamanomics<\/a>. Presidents who put reducing inequality above increasing prosperity end up with less growth and opportunity that benefits everyone, and thus with more inequality.<\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a lesson about the exhaustion of the liberal tax agenda. As a matter of arithmetic in a tax system as tilted toward the high end as America\u2019s, the rich aren\u2019t nearly rich enough to finance progressive ambitions. If Hillary Clinton <\/a> wants more redistribution, she\u2019ll inevitably have to tee up everybody between the 21st to 80th income percentiles for a European-style value-added tax, carbon tax or some other revenue maker.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Have you ever noticed that the people who want to redistribute wealth have enough money to pay accountants to shield their money? It is always the middle class that ends up paying the bill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the new mantras of the political left is income inequality. It is simply a crime that people who spent years becoming educated and learning things make considerably more money than those who didn’t. A college graduate has always … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[97,580,7245,1859,135,134],"class_list":["post-24421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-barack-obama","tag-congressional-budget-office","tag-health-and-human-services","tag-income-inequality","tag-obama-administration","tag-patient-protection-and-affordable-care-act"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24421"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24422,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24421\/revisions\/24422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}