Robbing the Productive: The Democrat Looter's Paradigm

Ponder a simple fact: The Obama administration is dispersing income lavishly to those who do not pay taxes and it will have to be paid for by those who do. For all the talk of that awful percentile who make over $200,000, this administration has not distinguished the hyper-rich 1% that make untold money (e.g., the Buffets, Soroses, Turners, Gateses, Kerrys, Gores, etc), from the much more demonized, larger 5% of the population whose income does not come from investments and insider influence and deal-making, but rather from providing more tangible goods and services — the family doctor, the plumbing contractor, the small lumber company owner, the car dealer, the local family-held insurance company, the airline pilot, the car-leasing firm, the patent attorney, etc...Last fall we heard that this percentile was unpatriotic, did not wish to spread the wealth around, and had made off like bandits under Bush. But the fact is, to quote Mayor Gavin Newsome’s “like it or not,” they are precisely those who decide most dynamically whether to hire, fire, expand, contract, buy/sell goods, etc...And the results of the Obama war against them are threefold: 1) in major key states, the productive minority’s state income taxes will near or exceed 10%; their federal rates will go to 40%; the abolition of caps on FICA will ensure 15% plus of most of their income will go for new Medicare and Social Security bites; and they may well be eligible for a newly proposed punitive health-care surcharge tax of 4-6%....The War Against the Producers, Victor Davis Hanson, 7/15/2009

Read all of Hanson's post. He combines a sharp awareness of contemporary facts and figures with a classical background in history and literature that combine to make him a formidable commentator. If what he describes sounds a little like Atlas Shrugged, be assured that Ayn Rand was not just expressing philosophy in that book. It remains a riveting critique of the devolution of productive society into a socialist quagmire. The difference between Rand's philosophical fiction and Hanson's contemporary narrative is uncomplicated. What Hanson's describes is what's happening now.

Luther