Remember when everyone was trying to keep up with the Joneses? Nowadays, it’s not about pulling even with them, but torturing, clobbering, pounding and eventually killing them. That’s the kind of hostile environment that only left-wingers can create (given their congenital penchant for violence), and Barack Obama seems determined to make this mindset the main plank in his platform.
It’s the US of E, the United States of Envy, as one astute columnist called it. In Obama’s America, it’s no longer about freedom and the pursuit of happiness. No, the new mission statement calls for targeting and then taking out those who for some reason managed to be more successful than you.
This manner of thinking is also what created and drove the Occupy movement, a bunch of bums whose brains have turned to mush due to regular consumption of drugs and/or alcohol and who, accordingly, think that society owes them.
The “one percenters”, who in Occupy parlance make all the moolah and leave next to nothing for the other 99 percent, have had a bull’s eye painted on their foreheads, and even the US president now thinks it’s OK to be gunning for them (even though he’s a one percenter himself).
But none of that is actually true, because the one percenters do contribute their fair share, paying something like 60% of all taxes, whereas half the American population pays little or no tax at all. Let’s not forget either that it’s the one percenters who create jobs. Without them, there would be very little economic activity in the US.
Warren Buffett, a veritable buffoon (proved by the fact that he’s best friends with another buffoon, Bill Gates), doesn’t understand how the world works, including the financial one, which is odd, as this is his métier after all. We all remember how he complained last year that his secretary was taxed at a higher rate than he was. Duh, one is tempted to say, because she pays taxes on earned income, whereas Buffett is taxed on his investments. That such a celebrated “financial genius” should make such a fundamental mistake of comparing apples and oranges is surprising, but at least now everyone knows that he really is a buffoon who doesn’t know anything and therefore tends to speak through his derriere.
Obama, primed and ready to start another class warfare, invited Buffett’s secretary to his State of the Union address, showing her off like some weird specimen at a freak show in the olden days. Too bad they didn’t paint a beard on her for added effect.
“Now, you can call this class warfare all you want. But asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense,”
proclaimed the Prez in his speech. He, too, succumbed to the fallacy started by Buffett, but added his own inaccuracy to the mix. In dollar amounts, Buffett actually paid a lot more in taxes than his secretary, so he did “pay at least as much as his secretary”, which is precisely what Obama – literally – called for.
Of course, the difference between taxes on income and taxes on investments went straight over the president’s head.
Now, Obama is free to change the tax code so as to equalize those two types of taxes, thus subjecting those who live off their investments to the same tax rate as personal income taxpayers. That doesn’t require a call to arms, as he did, but merely a change to existing laws. He can attempt to push through a bill like that and keep his fingers crossed that Republicans, and many Democrats, won’t defeat it.
Finally, allow me to digress a bit. The “1%” nonsense started by the Occupy movement needs to be put in perspective. Thanks to a left-wing reader of this publication, I can now reveal, yet again, the hypocrisy and sheer stupidity that drives everyone on the (far) left.
The “1% argument” goes something like this: those rich folks roll in money, and we need to force them to hand over more of their hard-earned money to those who don’t want to work hard, don’t go to school and educate themselves, and who generally don’t believe in personal responsibility. To even out the differences between the one percenters and the 99 percent, we have to take from the former and give generously to the latter.
This has been countered by those in the common sense camp who say that it wouldn’t be right to force the one percenters to give up everything, or at least most of what they worked hard to achieve. To which lefties retort that, no, it’s actually the only right thing to do.
As I have said before, the only true one percenters are the unions, especially the public sector unions. They pad their bank accounts, work next to zero hours, never so much as break a nail on the job, and then retire early (some in their forties and fifties) with a defined-benefit, and platinum-plated, pension plan – all things that none of us outside the unions has or can afford, and paid for by the “99%” – you and me, the ordinary taxpayers.
In reply to my “the unions are the one percenters” line of reasoning, said left-wing reader wrote:
So you want to crush their dream of secure employment and a comfortable retirement so that nobody has that.
First of all, I’m not about crushing anyone’s dream, but those fat cats need to live like the rest of us, that is, pay for their own (defined-contribution) pension plans, instead of robbing the rest of us blind and causing major deficits at all levels of government. As a result, we’d all be better off, as we wouldn’t have to pay through the nose to pay off the debt created by public sector unions.
Second, it’s funny how the left rejects the same arguments that it usually wields when attacking the “rich”. To the left, it is thus perfectly alright to crush the dreams of those who work hard and are lucky enough to end up as millionaires or even billionaires, but the union hogs can do as they please, and woe to anyone who attempts to bring them down to reality.
According to my much-appreciated reader, it’s best if we leave the union piggies and their perks alone, so that at least they have a comfortable life and retirement. Why, then, can the left not apply the same reasoning and leave the “rich” alone based on that premise, that is, that it’s better that at least some are fortunate enough to roll in money than taking measures to ensure that “nobody has that”?
The answer to that question is simple and straightforward: because they’re silly hypocrites who can’t, or won’t, think straight and logically.