Fair Share: the real meaning may be found in the words of a certain German philosopher

When they say the rich should pay their "fair share" of taxes, what do they really mean by this deliberately vague phrase? Two assumptions underlie it. The first is that making money is inherently evil, or, in other words, that capitalism is a scourge and egalitarianism, regardless of personal accomplishment, is an ideal that will usher in a paradise on Earth. In this sense, "fair share" does not mean the rich should pay their fair share of taxes, whatever fair means in that context, but that by being rich the wealthy have accumulated more than their fair share of wealth and property, as if there is some sort of objective scale for determining such things, and society has the obligation to relieve them of this excess and unnecessary accumulation.

The second assumption in the term "fair share" concerns the purpose of income tax. Many of us believe income tax is a revenue generating device enabling the government to fund itself so it can undertake various public projects, such as road building, police and fire departments, national defense, etc. But experience has shown that raising taxes actually tends to lower government revenue because the wealthy respond to higher taxes by moving away or sheltering their income from tax or refusing to start businesses, leading to more unemployment and fewer people paying taxes. It seems obvious that getting the wealthy to pay their fair share in taxes actually gives government less money. So why do progressives insist on it.

Progressives see income tax as a means of redistributing wealth, not principally as a revenue raising device, taking from those who have more than their fair share, and, through government, giving to those who don't, thereby leveling the playing field. Or as Karl Marx wrote, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need." This is the real meaning of "fair share." Any American who wants to prevent the country from becoming Zimbabwe should challenge not just the assumptions of this phrase, but its very legitimacy.

When they say the rich should pay their "fair share" of taxes, what are they really saying withthis vague phrase. For one thing, "fair share" is incredibly vague and it has a basic underlying assumption, that making money is inherently evil, that capitalism is a scourge and that egalitarianism regardless of accomplishment will usher in paradise on Earth. What they really mean is not that the rich should pay their fair share of taxes, whatever fair means anyway, but that by being rich they have accumulated more than their fair share of wealth and property. So another underlying assumption of the phrase "fair share" is that

200,000 is not a Million

Calling something Orwellian is rather overwrought these days to the point where it's becoming meaningless, but how close to Newspeak is it to demand tax increases for "millionaires and billionaires" when in reality the increase starts with people making $200,000. The Wall Street Journal editorial writers understand the difference between the two amounts and this is what they said about what they call the middle-class bait-and-switch:

Like Mr. Obama, Mr. [Warren] Buffett speaks about raising taxes only on the rich. But somehow he ignores that the President's tax increase starts at $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples. Mr. Obama ought to call them "thousandaires," but that probably doesn't poll as well.

The President needs to levy his tax increase at such a lower income level because that's where the money is. In 2009, 237,000 taxpayers reported income above $1 million and they paid $178 billion in taxes. A mere 8,274 filers reported income above $10 million, and they paid only $54 billion in taxes.

But 3.92 million reported income above $200,000 in 2009, and they paid $434 billion in taxes. To put it another way, roughly 90% of the tax filers who would pay more under Mr. Obama's plan aren't millionaires, and 99.99% aren't billionaires.

Mr. Buffett says it's only "fair" to raise his taxes, but he's lending his credibility to raising taxes on millions of middle-class earners for whom a few extra thousand dollars in after-tax income is a big deal. Unlike Mr. Buffett, those middle-class earners aren't rich and may earn $250,000 for only a few years of their working lives. How is that fair? 

They hate the bourgeois middle class and it's them they're after and always have been.

 

Tolstoy quote of the day

Tolstoy, War and Peace, Book II, part 2, chapter 2:

No one can attain to truth by himself; only by laying stone upon stone, with the cooperation of all, through millions of generations, from our forefather Adam down to our own day, is that temple raised which is to be a worthy dwelling place for the Almighty God.

The Fall of the Communism as seen by a student of Tatar history

From Nationalism and the Drive for Sovereignty in Tatarstan by Sergei Kondrashov:

The initial alliance between the Gorbachev leadership and the intelligentsia paved the way for an important feature of the Gorbachev period--a prominent role in society for the intelligentsia in general and its democratic wing in particular. The main weapon that secured this position for the democratic intellectuals was their criticism of the vices and ulcers of Soviet society from the moral high ground. The Victorious Analysis focused on two overarching problems. Firstly, it subjected to thorough examination all the alleged achievements of the seventy years of the Soviet state. Secondly, it left no stone unturned in assessing the costs related to these achievements. 

Ultimately, the Analysis arrived at the final verdict that the seventy years of the Soviet system were wasted years in the history of the peoples of the USSR. Absolutely nothing had been achieved that one might be proud of while the costs--human, social, economic, and cultural--had been horrendous. People learned that the industrialization effort had created an outmoded, extremely wasteful and polluting industry that was as good as a heap of scrap metal; that their living standards were comparable with an underdeveloped country of the Third Word; that the great Soviet science had been able to produce nothing but a stockpile of outdated military hardware; and that the aggressive West was not that aggressive after all. Furthermore, the Soviets learned that their friends in the Third World were nothing but parasitic dictatorial regimes, and that their allies did not just dislike the Soviets, but despised them. And the final conclusion was: the sooner the Soviet system in all its totality was disoposed of, the better it would be for the country.