We Need More Millionaires!

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

Little do these ideological political hacks realize that the top 10% of wage earners (those earning more than $133,000 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? And many of those people who pay nothing complain that the “rich” don't pay their fair share. Are they kidding?

Since the liberals want to punish millionaires (and billionaires) by raising their taxes to raise more government revenue ( most likely 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 a few years ago, there were 399,000 people in 2007 earning over $1 million. In 2009, 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 were promoted by the then Obama administration, wouldn't it be smart to try to have more millionaires rather than less millionaires to increase the revenues to the government? 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 and just”. Aren't most of those “evil” rich people the one's who create jobs and make investments to start or expand their businesses? By over taxing them, by giving more of the money they earned to the government, they couldn't hire more employees or expand their businesses. A no-win, no-win situation. The people with a Socialist mindset would try to make us believe that businesses create oppression, while government creates prosperity. Of course, the total opposite is true, as any sane economist will tell you.

A widely known fact (except to liberals) is that rich people have the financial resources to move their money anywhere (voting with their feet), especially to places where they will not be punished by an avaricious government who wants to “redistribute the wealth”, like the former Obama administration, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders said they wanted 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, many of 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% in income taxes a few years ago?).

So, instead of lowering or reducing the number of millionaires, we should be instituting policies that would encourage more people to become millionaires. Has anyone reading this editorial ever been hired by a poor person? And also remember, the Socialist states like Cuba, and Venezuela which are economic basket cases because they have taken out the incentive for people to become a success and replaced it with a vast government bureaucracy, who's main object is to “redistribute wealth”, who are now the ones living the good life while the average citizen, in those countries, just barely gets by.

The United States is the richest country in the world because our founding fathers had the foresight to base our country on the free enterprise capitalist system, not the Socialist system. The Declaration of Independence said that everyone should have the opportunity for the “pursuit of happiness” not the “guarantee of happiness”. Let the cream rise to the top, and give everyone the opportunity to get to the top. For those that can not achieve the top, our policies should have a “safety net” to help those that cannot help themselves, which does not include the “freeloaders” who suck on the teat of Uncle Sam, which seems to be quite popular among many left-wing liberals and on many of our college campuses today. Bernie Sanders brand of Socialism is quite popular among the economic illiterate who are looking to get something for nothing.

So, let's encourage everyone to become billionaires and millionaires, with a hand-up rather than a hand-out, so that they can contribute to the success of our country instead of being a drag on our economy.

Conservative commentary by Chuck Lehmann