[The Madcap]

You have the right to defend billionaires. I just don't think that's what people want to hear when we have had 50 years of wealth redistribution from the middle class to the millionaires and billionaires. The law of diminishing returns applies to everything including fiscal conservatism. You can only cut taxes so far. If you want even lower taxes on the rich go live in Antarctica. America now has the largest income gap of any industrialized nation, clearly fiscal conservatism, in the sense the recent GOP has been using, it doesn't work.

Your opinion is identical to Glenn Beck's so why are you telling me to turn off the TV? I hardly ever watch TV.

This post cracks me up Yak and is the perfect illustration of all that you fail to see.

You say we've had 50 years of "wealth redistribution" from the middle class to the millionaires and billionaires. Yeah. And how has that money been redistributed? What is the only entity large enough to facilitate such a thing? THE GOVERNMENT. But not in the way you think.

Here's how it has actually worked:

The government taxes and taxes and taxes us. We get mad. So the gov't lowers one tax and ups another. All the while massively increasing the budget and expenditures. While some of those expenditures come back to us in the form of social security, much of its is funneled, through public works projects, energy initiatives, the military industrial complex, bailouts, etc to the biggest corporations and wealthiest families. Money that has made them even richer. Money that was ours that should have stayed ours. Money that they took, or perhaps more accurately, that we gave them, through taxes.

See there was a time when taxes were fairly even and middle class and upper middle class people kept a comparable percentage of their wealth. But then we got more taxes, and different types of taxes. Taxes that became harder and harder for middle class people to avoid. Taxes that crippled the upper mobility of middle class Americans. And a gap started to form. A gap between the super rich and the moderately rich. While the wealthy still had enough large chunks of money to keep getting richer, the moderately rich didn't get any richer. Things like estate/death/property taxes that are more easily incured by the wealthy, began to handicap the middle rich. And they became stagnant. They didn't have as much to invest or put away or leave to their children. They couldn't make their money grow. And in not being able to make their money grow, there weren't as many companies springing up to compete with the large corporations that were running the show. And so they consolidated their power and influence in the market making it even harder for start-up companies to make it big. (Until Bill Gates and Steve Jobs came along. But that is another story.)

Anyway, back to taxes. Some Americans realized that use of the tax code was how wealth was being transferred from the middle class to the rich. That the rich disguised this transfer by giving crumbs of these taxes as gifts to the poor (welfare/tanf), the elderly (social security) and the working class (public works jobs). And upon realizing this, these Americans got pissed off, and went about finding a solution. That solution was to cut taxes and cut the budget. Because these Americans believed in themselves. They didn't need the wealthy, what they needed was just to keep their own wealth.

Only some Americans didn't see it this way. Some Americans continued to be suckers for the ploys of the wealthy, allowing their sympathies to be preyed upon by elitists out for more of their money. Elitists don't like self-made men. They don't want them rising up in fame and fortune. Because eventually they'd have to see them at their social clubs and hobnobbing functions. And so they set-out to destroy the self-made man by pitting him against his lower class brethren. They made it harder for him to rise up by increasing the tax burden on him. They and their sympathizers took over the schools and universities to instill ideas of government compelled altruism, further embittering the strong risers and weaker followers against one another. And the fight still wages today.

You want to see taxes rise on the wealthiest one percent, but you fail to see that those making $250,000 a year are not wealthy. They might be "rich," or "richer," but they are not wealthy. Nor are folks like my dad whose law firm partnership is crippled by the tax laws, because they make more than $250,000--even though he hasn't brought home more than $100,000 in a year since Reagan was in office.

Nor are the folks making $130,000 a year wealthy. They may be richer than most, but they are not wealthy. Not by any means. And they lose upwards of 50% of their annual income through the tax code. Whether it's income tax, sales tax, property tax, excise tax, whatever. He manages to get by with a middle class living. Sort of. And that's not supposed to be the maximum limit of being middle class. And it is today. And it has nothing to do with the rich being taxed less, it has to do with the fact that the middle class is taxed beyond their growth rate. And that is what must be reversed. And the only way to do that is to cut the budget. To cut taxes. To keep that money in middle class pockets and middle class bank accounts. And get back to that time when the wealthy had to earn our money honestly, through the creation of their own goods and services, and not by using the government to force us to buy their goods and services. A lot of Americans realize this. Americans that are older than you that have been around a while. Americans that have worked for themselves and started their own businesses. Americans that have through their own initiative and experience realize what creates success and failure. Americans that have heard enough excuses to have a pretty good BS detector. And they are the folks voting for the GOP.

You think the GOP only represents 2% of the population. And you think that because you are a sucker. And you've fallen hook line and sinker for the liberal fairy tale. Most Americans wake up and realize it's a fairy tale and they've been suckered. And that's why most Americans get more conservative as they get older. You probably will one day too. And it's ok. We'll welcome you with open arms.