Vice President Joe Biden has regularly caused uproars with his off-the-cuff remarks and serial gaffs. However, his most interesting remarks are not gaffs but clear statements of his views on some subjects. This is particularly evident on issues of taxes. Biden has called previously for the redistribution of wealth and called higher taxes an act of patriotism. For many, he epitomizes the image of a tax-based liberal and this week he seems intent of ratcheting up that image. At a Black History Month event at his official residence, Biden called for a new “emancipation:” freeing money from the rich.
Biden told the group that “A lot of wealthy white and black people aren’t bad but they control 1 percent of the economy and this cannot stand . . . It’s not fair because the business experts are saying that concentration of wealth is stunting growth. So let’s do something that’s worthy of emancipation.”
Freeing the wealth of some of their money, Biden suggests, would help them as individuals: “What happened is not only did we move toward freeing black Americans but also the conscience of white Americans.”
Biden’s continued commitment to the idea of redistribution of wealth stands in contrast to the White House talking points. Many have argued that the White House is committed to redistribution through higher taxes. However, the White House has been careful to justify tax increases on specific program support. There is a conceptual difference (even if not much of a practical difference) in higher taxes for social welfare programs and higher taxes to redistribute wealth. The goal in the first case is improving the social net while the goal in the latter case is to achieve greater wealth equity.
The United States has never embraced the notion of wealth distribution as a primary goal, or even a secondary goal, of tax policy. Moreover, top earners probably disagree that they are in need of moral rehabilitation through taxation. The top one percent of earners in this country already pay a high percentage of taxes collected by the state and federal governments (though some question the fairness of this comparison). Many of us are concerned about the growing wealth disparity in this country and the world, including myself. I have written regularly about the widening gap. However, I am also leery of politicians who start to speak of taxes to redistribute wealth — particularly as a form of moral improvement.
Source: USA Today
A jealousy and envy of the rich fight. What fun. As I get older I seem to find that there are people who understand that greed is good and there are those who feel guilty about their own greed although they won’t admit it.
“Bush, Koch, Walton and Rockefellar, escaped your keen eye…”
No, just agreeing with Aristotle for the win.
Pogo:
I guess Bush, Koch, Walton and Rockefellar, escaped your keen eye along with Romney and a myriad of other kingmakers whose family names we’ll never know who lounge on your side of the aisle.
As a debater you make a fine doctor.
“Geographically isolated “, and numbering in the tens of thousands maximum, they were able to practice a unique form of egalitarianism.
My response is the same:
It has not been reproducible, and therefore may only apply to small, racially and culturally homogeneous, geographically isolated, pre-industrial agrarian or hunter-gatherer societies.
The lesson for us is to avoid extrapolating data that do not apply.
“When the rich grow numerous or properties increase, the form of government changes into an oligarchy or a government of families”
Clinton, Gore, Boxer, Pelosi, John Kerry, Arlen Specter, Mark Warner, Hollywood stars, Robert Rubin, Google founders Larry Page and Sergei Brin, Bill Gates, Soros, Buffett.
Oh wait, those are Democrats.
As with our courts, federal agencies policing and This Blog being too discrete to point out how Wall Street elites are ripping off, breaking the law too
I also desire to relieve the unjustly enriched from their ill gotten gains.
If they can break the law, many (MANY) times and make mockery of justice, assaulting the Constitution of the United States with the assistance of tax paid public servants being despotic. ..
Then we have the right…The Duty…to remove autocrats and seditious, relieving them of their spoils of civil war.
issac, Well, since it would appear they are no longer around, it sounds like a really good system.
Dennis Miller about a week or so ago called Biden an Ass Hat. Made me laugh out loud.
Pogo
The Haida example is, of course, an isolated circumstance. What makes it interesting is that the people were not affected for many, many generations by the threats that the rest of the world experienced. Geographically isolated they evolved through the conquest stage and focused on their society. I doubt very much that if they had continued to rampage, loot, raid, pillage, and sack as the rest of the tribes were doing along with the Europeans, that they could have resisted any more than the rest of the indigenous people did. There were battles and they did win a few.
However, they did recognize the power of the ability to accumulate as more important than the loot. There is a lesson there related to the need to innovate, change, compete, refine, evolve.
Biden should talk to John kerry:
2010: “Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry is docking his family’s new $7 million yacht in neighboring Rhode Island, allowing him to avoid paying roughly $500,000 in taxes to the cash-strapped Bay State.
If the “Isabel” were kept at the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee’s summer vacation home on Nantucket, or in Boston Harbor near his city residence, he would be liable for $437,500 in one-time sales tax. He would also have to pay $70,000 in annual excise taxes.
Rhode Island repealed those taxes in 1993. That has made the state something of a nautical tax haven.“
Aridog, Great tribute for a man who works for a living, not looking for a disability check from the govt.
Aridog, not sure I understand where that $299,803 figure came from. Biden’s adjust gross income for 2013 was $407,009. They paid $96,378 in federal taxes, an effective rate of 23.7%. They paid $14,644 to Delaware State Income tax, and $3,470 in Virginia State income tax. Charitable giving was $20,523, which is about 5% of his adjusted gross income.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/image/2013_vpotus_tax_returns.pdf
The link you provided was interesting in showing his net worth to be a negative $1.6 million. Looks like he runs his own household the same way he oversees government spending. He runs a big debt. Why do we elect people like this? Maybe we should make it a requirement of politicians to have a positive net worth, especially those who want to emancipate the wealthy from their wealth. LOL.
david – I do know that Biden charges the Secret Service for the use of his guest house when they are protecting him.
I should add that I pay the hardest working man I know $40 / hour for lawn and snow work…$500 for last month alone. No deduction for that, as it is wage for performance. I do it because I need to do so (lazy, or just old, you might say) and because I can do so….even when it pinches a bit. A guy like my guy “Dwight” is rare and I plan to keep him happy for as long as I can. I know his history (shot up badly long ago) and couldn’t keep his certified welder’s job. Judi and I found him new work (not just us and our yard) and he’s never missed an appointed hour….in over 10 years or so now.
Hello Joe…are you listening?
Joe Biden’s average income is $299,803, with a base salary of $230,700. Now tell me, is that “rich” or “middle class” or “poor?” Granted he’s less wealthy than many Congress persons, but far better off than much of the country. How much of his wealth, such as it is, is he willing to “liberate?” Based upon his returns, with his wife, their charitable contributions amount to a maximum of 1.87% of their income.
I give more to our local animal shelter than that. from far less current income….because I choose to do so. I do not demand anyone else match or exceed me. I am not counting the 4+% we (Judi & I jointly) give to individuals in need, directly without deductions.
Sorry Joe…put your money where your mouth is, or shut the flip up.
LINK
Let Biden take the first move then! Nothing shows sincerity like action! What, he didn’t take any action? Well, I never!!!
Justice Holmes, well said!
Contingency fees should be taxed @ a 90% rate. Do you think Dems will go for that? LOL. Plaintiff attorneys are one of their biggest donors.
Pogo:
“Early Christians ran into the same problem. The movement attracted no small number of shirkers unwilling to contribute to the common good, but more than happy to mooch off the communal wealth. Hence, that pattern was soon abandoned.”
************
So that’s the historical connection between Repub tax shirkers and Christianity. Thanks for the lesson.
Political revolutions also spring from a disproportionate increase in any part of the state. For as a body is made up of many members, and every member ought to grow in proportion, that symmetry may be preserved; but loses its nature if the foot be four cubits long and the rest of the body two spans; and, should the abnormal increase be one of quality as well as of quantity, may even take the form of another animal: even so a state has many parts, of which some one may often grow imperceptibly; for example, the number of poor in democracies and in constitutional states. And this disproportion may sometimes happen by an accident, as at Tarentum, from a defeat in which many of the notables were slain in a battle with the Iapygians just after the Persian War, the constitutional government in consequence becoming a democracy; or as was the case at Argos, where the Argives, after their army had been cut to pieces on the seventh day of the month by Cleomenes the Lacedaemonian, were compelled to admit to citizen some of their Perioeci; and at Athens, when, after frequent defeats of their infantry at the time of the Peloponnesian War, the notables were reduced in number, because the soldiers had to be taken from the roll of citizens. Revolutions arise from this cause as well, in democracies as in other forms of government, but not to so great an extent. When the rich grow numerous or properties increase, the form of government changes into an oligarchy or a government of families. Forms of government also change- sometimes even without revolution, owing to election contests, as at Heraea (where, instead of electing their magistrates, they took them by lot, because the electors were in the habit of choosing their own partisans); or owing to carelessness, when disloyal persons are allowed to find their way into the highest offices, as at Oreum, where, upon the accession of Heracleodorus to office, the oligarchy was overthrown, and changed by him into a constitutional and democratical government.
Silly old Biden echoing that know-nothing Aristotle, Book V, Politics.
Issac – Put on anthropological thinking hat for a moment.
Take Conquistador Francisco Pizarro in Peru and conquest of Incan Empire for model. It’s about a powerful Indian woman queen who allied with Pizarro to overthrow Inca bullies.
You do the background check. Vatican and Catholic authority apply. Makes life more interesting.
Moreover, the wealth destruction part of Haida Gwaii culture appears to have made them unable to defend themselves once the inevitable march of human migration reached their tiny islands.
Early Christians ran into the same problem. The movement attracted no small number of shirkers unwilling to contribute to the common good, but more than happy to mooch off the communal wealth. Hence, that pattern was soon abandoned.
His truth is marching on.