Income Redistribution

Here is the original line item:
You didn't get mad when we gave people who had more money than they could spend, the filthy rich, over a trillion dollars in tax breaks.
My Response:
Here we go again with the class wars. What about all the tax breaks that now exist for not-so-rich? Do you know that almost 48% of Americans don’t pay anything in taxes? Yes, everyone pays out of each paycheck, but when these 48-ers file their tax returns, it all comes back. In fact, a very large percentage get back more than they paid in. I know someone who last year paid around $5,500.00 in taxes but their refund check came back at nearly $6,800.00. Where did that extra money come from? Why the “filthy rich” of course. The top 1% in income pays nearly 20% of the taxes. The top 40% pay almost the entire tax bill. How much more do you want? Based on your comments, I’d guess you’d like the Dems to take even more and give it to you in the form of income distribution. You basically want to receive something you did not earn.

Regardless what you might read or what you might see on TV, most of the wealth in this country is not what could be called old money (handed down through the generations). Think about some of the wealthiest people in recent years. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs, George Steinbrenner, Phil Knight and many others started off with little or nothing. These people are self made. They had the ideas, they took the risks, they worked the LONG, LONG hours to get their products off the ground and into the people’s hands. As they were doing this, they were making other people wealthy. Bill Gates created approximately 10,000 millionaires. All of these people created jobs, many of them well-paying.

Why is it that other people they have some sort of right to the money these people earned through hard work? And who determine who has enough money? Most of these people are philanthropists or the first order. Gates has given more than $33B of his fortune to his foundation that assists education, health care and other charitable causes. Buffet has stated publically that he plans on giving his entire fortune to charity and he has already started with a huge $30B donation the Gates’ foundation. Knight gives his money to the University of Oregon.

Some people will say why they don’t give the money to government so bureaucrats can determine where the money should go. Do you really think that the government can do better with the money? If so, then you really are in love with government. I would be willing to bet that if you asked each of these people why they don’t give the money to government for spending determinations and they’d probably laugh at you. The government is no where nearly as efficient at spending money as private individuals are. Why would you want the government telling you how to spend you paycheck? Just think about that for minute. They would tell you what kind of car to buy, what to buy at the grocery store, the clothes you could purchase. Do you really think you’d have money left over? As someone who spent several years in the federal government, there was no incentive to spend money wisely. In fact, if you budgeted X-numbers of dollars to spend for the fiscal year and you could come in under that by finding items below what you originally budgeted, not only would your next’s budget be chopped, but it would be cut back below what you actually spent. In other words, if you saved 5%, the next year you’d actually be reduced by 10%. Spending money wisely and efficiently is not the federal governments DNA.