Don’t Punish The Rich… Just Tax Them

1.29.10

With the huge (and growing) deficient in our nation, more and more Americans are look at the country’s ‘rich’ to solve the problem.

Liberals seek, not to punish the rich, but to tax their pants off.

Aside from the array of new wealth taxes being proposed in Washington, there is the proliferation of the “millionaire” taxes (a brilliantly named tax which reach has extended far below the level of millionaires) at the state level–all in the name of better education and progress for all.

There are two new proposals stoking the “tax-the-rich” fires. Voters in Oregon on Tuesday passed Ballot Measures 66 and 67, which raises taxes on households earning more than $250,000 a year, and individuals earning more than $125,000 (the “thousandaire’s tax?”). It also raises taxes on companies. The government says the measures will raise $727 million over two fiscal years.

Meanwhile, in Minnesota, former U.S. Senator Mark Dayton, who now running for governor, is advocating raising taxes on households with total incomes (that is combined) of $150,000 or more a year. That would be the top 10% of Minnesotans, he says.

This issue always intrigues me.

For years I have feared that our government will go ’1 too many times to the well’ in their pursuit of taxing the rich. As our world continues to become more global, rather than national, the opportunity to do business outside of the United States becomes more real. Combine that with growing taxation and you are practically asking America’s wealth to leave.

With the top 1% of Americans paying over 40% of the country’s income tax, what happens when they leave? Estimates already show that nearly $3 Trillion dollars of American wealth is kept outside of the country, for tax reasons – I remind you that this sum of money is equal to our nation’s deficit. So we are talking about a lot of moo-la.

Can our country afford to continually apply tax pressure on the nation’s wealthy – on those who pay all of the country’s bills?