Star Parker: What's envy worth?
Rich Dems should mind their own business and stop meddling in ours.
Now that Democrats are back in power, it's hard to open a newspaper or watch the news without hearing about the "income gap" or the "wealth gap."
Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who will take over as chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, says he wants to hold hearing on "How do you do a better job of sharing overall economic growth with the average worker?" and calls this the "No. 1 problem" facing the country. Perhaps Mr. Frank should check with his colleagues on Capitol Hill, who seem to be surviving the assault on working Americans quite well.
Roll Call newspaper has just completed its annual survey of the 50 wealthiest members of Congress. The cutoff at No. 50, at $4.67 million, is up 12 percent from last year's survey.
The top four wealthiest members are all Mr. Frank's fellow Democrats: John Kerry ($750 million), Herb Kohl ($243 million), Jay Rockefeller ($200 million) and Jane Harman ($172 million).
The top five would have been Democrats, but John Corzine ($262 million) departed the Senate to become governor of New Jersey.
New Speaker Nancy Pelosi comes in at No. 15, at a paltry $14.25 million net worth. How about Hillary Clinton? No. 25 at $10.05 million.
Illinois Democrat Rahm Emmanuel, who wants to scrutinize executive compensation and champion activist government for the poor and middle class, is worth $8.52 million.
Two relevant questions to ask: Is the stuff about the growing gaps in income and wealth true? And, second, even if it is, does it matter?
Without trying to answer the first question, it is worth pointing out that what the press cranks out daily as gospel is far from accurate.
Cato Institute economist and columnist Alan Reynolds challenges the conventional wisdom a gap exists in a new textbook called Income and Wealth. Mr. Reynolds demonstrates the statistical complications and vagaries in compiling data on income and wealth. He shows that this is a field of dreams for politicians who can come up with whatever they want to and can show whatever they want to show.
Mr. Reynolds thinks that the country is in great shape and that American workers are really the envy of the rest of the world.
Regarding the second question, my answer is that this information is important if what you really care about is what your neighbor has. However, I would suggest that there is a reason that the Tenth Commandment is "Thou Shalt Not Covet."
Fear and envy create wealth for politicians who use these levers, as Democrats want to do now, to activate and grow government as a pretense for solving problems that people can only solve for themselves.
A recently released study by the Goldwater Institute in Arizona examines, state by state, changes in the rates of poverty from 1990 to 2000.
The study shows that in the last decade, the 10 states with the lowest per capita government spending had an 11.2 percent decline in poverty rates and the 10 states with the highest per capita spending had a 7.3 percent increase in poverty rates.
The 10 states with the lowest levels of taxation had a 13.7 percent decline in poverty rates and the 10 states with the highest level of taxation had a 3.04 percent increase.
Individuals who work create jobs. It's an issue of freedom and values, not social engineering.
What can politicians do? Help get government out of the way.
If the newly crowned Democrats want to do better than Republicans, they should start with education. Barney Frank thinks that the nation's No. 1 problem is worrying what everyone else is earning. The nation's No. 1 problem is the public school monopoly and what it is doing to inner-city kids.
Bust the public school monopoly. Get more freedom in education. This is what Democrats can do to help.
Syndicated columnist Star Parker is a regular commentator on CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News as well as author of "White Ghetto: How Middle Class America Reflects Inner City Decay." She can be contacted through
http://www.urbancure.org.
John Kerry $750 million
Herb Kohl $243 million
Jay Rockefeller $200 million
Jane Harman $172 million
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I have always been an advocate of lower taxes. This is the biggest single reason I tend to vote for and support the Republicans, despite disagreement on numerous "smaller" issues. The data presented in this article tends to support the case for lowering taxes.
Just about all the members of congress, Republican, Democrat, or Independent, are wealthy. All of them are getting wealthier while they preform their "public service". But only one group of them is using slogans like "tax breaks for the rich" while actually using those tax breaks themselves, and that group is the Democrats. John Kerry didn't get his effective tax rate to 11.8% by not using tax breaks.
What irks me is not the use of the tax breaks - they are legal and usually there for a good reason - but the way the Hypocrats try to use them as a weapon by misrepresenting themselves as a champion of the litltle guy against the big guy. Now they are talking about taxing big oil. A lot of ignorant people who see themselves as small guys think thtt's good - tax the big guy, leave me alone. How many of you educated, well-informed people on this board think the little guy won't end up paying those taxes at the pump, or in some other way? Yet the Hypocrats keep hammering the class warfare angle, even though they know it will end up coming out of the pockets of the consumer. I find this disgusting.
I don't advocate the abolition of taxes. Clearly they are a neccesary evil, but i think the balance point between what is needed and what is asked is much lower than current levels.
I think the current income and estate taxes should be junked, and replaced with a national consumption tax. There is already a collection appartus in place in most states that the Feds could piggyback on cheaply. To make the tax less regressive, I would exempt groceries, gasoline, and medical supplies/services.
Social Security and medicare taxes must be retained. That ship has left the docks.
