Let the Rich Pay for it!

Looks like the House Ways and Means Committee approved the government-run health insurance plan with a nice little kick in the pants to our nation's best earners. This is like a day at the carnival for liberals.

I don't understand why people don't seem to realize that taxing 'the rich' could possibly affect them. Firstly, we may or may not be talking about the wealthiest people here. Indeed, many of the wealthiest, such as Warren Buffett, now draw incomes much lower than these thresholds. So, they're really talking about taxing those who will potentially become some of the wealthiest, in the future. Either way, in the news, the rhetoric, and the propaganda, they say we're taxing 'the rich' because that makes 'the poor' feel better.

Secondly, these are the people that employ other people. Many of them probably own or manage businesses that presumably have employees. They can't be expected to carry us all on their backs, can they? It's not that 1% of $350,000 in itself is that much (well, $3500 is a lot of money to me), but do you think that is the first discriminatory tax placed on these people? By discriminatory, I mean the tax is levied on a very specific group of people. Virtually every new spending plan proposing taxing 'the rich' to pay for it. How many more taxes will they take before they leave, or worse, stop producing? Some of them are probably already hiding out in a safe haven somewhere in the Rockies…

Hell, I'm as jealous of rich people as anyone. I live in a crappy one bedroom apartment – and likely to for several more years. There are a lot of nice houses in my area, and I can admit to just a little house envy. But that gives me no right to take what someone else has earned to satisfy my envy. NO right. There are no circumstances in which I am entitled to any part of the income of anyone else, let alone someone who has produced far more than I.

This is an important point, and one that people conveniently forget when there are huge government spending increases to be paid for. Except in the case of criminal activities, people earn lots of money solely because they provide lots of value. There's this public image of evil executives sneaking into company vaults and taking everything. People like that are an exception, and they can't survive in a free market for long. The fact is, work is a commodity like anything else, and its price is commensurate with what it is worth to the buyer.

Just think of some of the famous rich people in history. They built the railroads, invented all the conveniences we have today (and were sometimes equally scorned for it). We have the highest standard of living yet known to man because of the people that produced the most in the past and present. I have no clue how the laptop I'm using works and could never build one in a thousand years – and that means the people that designed and built it are worthy of my thanks.

"But I work my ass off, and these guys sit at a desk getting paid twice my salary" – what does that tell you? Your labor isn't worth as much because a million other people can do it. Or it doesn't benefit that many people. I could break my back stacking big rocks on top of other big rocks, but that doesn't entitle me to earn more money. To earn money, you must provide value. That means you must have skills and experience that are highly demanded, but in short supply.

If you want to thumb your nose at rich people, to feel better, go ahead. OR you could learn a skill, work harder, do something to move yourself in that direction. People talk about the rich as if they're a bunch of spoiled cats living pampered lives on the 'backs' of others. Maybe people like Paris Hilton are, but the producers, the earners that our nation seeks to penalize so much – they're more like beasts of burden, carrying our weight.

We should be telling them, "Thanks – keep going!" But each new tax we throw on their backs instead says, "Don't work so hard. Produce less… Be more like the rest of us." Can you imagine the awful situation we'd be in if they all decided to heed that?