A politician waxes eloquent about the evils of wealth and income disparity between rich and poor. A rich man publicly proclaims that he is not taxed enough.
The politician then begs the rich man for campaign contributions so that he can run a successful election campaign and increase his taxes.
And you think Donald Trump is goofy?
It gets goofier.
Where does a rich man store his wealth? In his mattress? In a hidden safe in his study? In a safety deposit box in the bank? Not any place like that because the rich man learned that people will pay him if he lets them use his money.
You are a young millennial living in your parents basement and one day, you have a brain fart and a vision of a better glomfluger. Since every home has at least one, you get excited by the idea of creating a glomfluger manufacturing business and your next move is to build a prototype and apply for a patent; then the fun begins as you total up the money you will need before you sell the first one.
Undaunted, you find a consultant on the Internet who introduces you to the rich man. He is excited about your prototype and you reach an agreement on the price for using some of his money.
Stop!
Just a minute there. The rich man calls back and says since taxes went up, he doesn’t have enough investment capital left to stake your business, so check back with him in a year.
Put on another hat. You are a voter and about to be deluged with the biggest load of beguiling speech (BS for short) between now and November 2020. Think about the proposition of income inequality which is being bandied about ad nausea.
We are born with a wide variety of talents with widely varying degrees of potential compensation. The best history teacher in the world will never make much as a CEO of a Fortune 5 corporation yet they have both gone where their individual talents took them. Do you really want a government with the power to make those compensation packages equal?
If government enacts a confiscatory tax on the wealthy for the purpose of equalizing incomes, there will never be investment capital for a new glomfluger business and the “would have been” employees will be getting food stamps instead.
Howard Schultz, former Starbucks CEO and potential 2020 presidential candidate and Bill Gates, as well as other mega wealthy people say they aren’t taxed enough and it is certainly their right to dispose of their wealth any way they choose. But when they are responsible for government taking more of it for cosmetic reasons after being shamed by a politician in pursuit of power, it is depressing for all of us not-so-rich folks.
