We Need More Millionaires

The far left “liberal loons” are constantly attacking successful people (a/k/a millionaires) by saying we should tax these people more than they are already taxed because the liberals claim that it is “fair” - their favorite word when they want to raise taxes.

Little do these ideological political hacks realize that the top 10% of wage earners (those earning more than $114,000 per year) pay approximately 70% of all income taxes and that approximately 48% of wage earners pay no income taxes. Talk about fairness? Shouldn't every citizen have to pay something to support our country?

Since the liberals want to punish millionaires (and billionaires) by raising their taxes to raise more government revenue (to pay for more entitlements instead of reducing the debt), maybe they should do just the opposite, lower their taxes so that the government will gain more tax revenue? What, you say? Lower their tax rates and get more revenue? Yes, and here's why. According to an editorial in the Wall Street Journal, there were 399,000 people in 2007 earning over $1 million. In 2009 (the last year statistics were available), there were 237,000 millionaires, a drop of 39%. The people earning a million and above in 2007, paid approximately $309 billion in income taxes. In 2009 they paid approximately $178 billion, a drop of 42% in revenue paid to the government. So if the revenue goes down when we lower the number of millionaires, due to policies that are promoted by the administration, wouldn't it be smart to try to have more millionaires than less millionaires? That's where the dopey economic theories of the liberals come into play, because they feel that successful people shouldn't earn a lot of money (a million or more) because it is not “fair”.

A widely known fact (except to liberals) is that rich people have the financial resources to move their money anywhere, especially to places where they will not be punished by an avaricious government who wants to “redistribute the wealth”, like the Obama administration said it wants to do. As you can see from a few of the states that raised tax rates to levels that some people found to be oppressive, the “wealthy” people moved out of those states (ex. California, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts etc.) to states like Arizona, Florida, Texas, and New Hampshire to avoid those excessive state taxes. Along with their move out of those states, along went the tax revenue that those “wealthy” taxpayers paid to those states.

Another aspect of over taxing successful (wealthy) people is that they can hire accountants and lawyers who will help them find loopholes to avoid paying taxes (does G.E. come to mind as they paid 0% last year in income taxes?).

So, instead of lowering the number of millionaires, we should be instituting policies that would encourage more people to become millionaires.

Conservative commentary by Chuck Lehmann