RE: Latest Harris Targets Billionaires Hit piece
I have two questions about making the “rich” pay their “fair share.”
1. What is their “fair share”? Is there some objectively determined “fair share,” or is it simply a device to justify never ending increases in top tax rates? If there is some objective standard, it seems to me that it should be based on what portion of taxes are paid by the “rich” worldwide. And if that is the standard, then the “rich” in the USA are paying way more than their “fair share,” because the proportion of total taxes paid by the “rich” is much higher in the USA than in other developed countries.
2. Exactly how does raising the tax rate for, say, Elon Musk or Bill Gates or Warren Buffett, help the poor or middle class? I mean, do we simply take Musk’s and Gates’s and Buffett’s money and write checks to poor people? Or does that money simply go to fund another layer of bloat in an already overbloated federal government? I think we both know the answer to that question. There is a reason why the top two counties in the USA for average household income, and 5 of the top 12, are in the DC metro area, and it’s not because anybody there is doing anything useful. There actually is a very logical and tangible proof that higher taxes on millionaires and billionaires are harmful to the poor and middle classes—particularly the working classes as opposed to the non-working welfare class. Note from above that the “rich” in the USA are already shouldering a much larger share of the total tax bite than are their competitors in Europe or Asia. That means that if I’m getting ready to invest a billion or two in a new facility, the tax advantages of doing so overseas are very significant. Predictably, we’ve seen a significant migration of investment, growth, and middle class jobs in foreign countries. Worldwide, the middle class is growing by leaps and bounds, while in the USA it is shrinking. The USA is exporting our middle class. So let’s consider that a 5% increase in USA taxes means the difference between building a new factory in the USA or in Poland. And let’s assume further that this new factory was going to pay between $60,000 and $80 000. If you are a middle class blue collar worker, are you better off taking a job in the new plant paying, say, $75,000 a year, or being stuck at your current $50,000 because that $80,000 job factory went to Poland but Musk and Gates and Buffett are paying 5% more in taxes?
Now the argument I typically get when making that last point is that taxes are not the only factor in making plant siting decisions. Nobody said they were, but they are a factor, and usually a pretty big one.
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