Below is my column in The Hill newspaper on the growing calls from Democratic presidential candidates for “wealth taxes” targeting the increasingly demonized “super rich.” Putting aside serious questions over the constitutionality of such wealth taxes (despite being the core cause of candidates like Elizabeth Warren), Democrats appear to be moving from Rousseauian to a Robespierrean rhetoric in this new class warfare.
Here is the column with a few of the underlying facts beyond the rhetoric:
“When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.” Philosopher Rousseau said those words about the French Revolution more than 200 years ago, but they could well have been a talking point in the Democratic debates this week. The candidates brushed aside repeated questions about raising taxes to pay the trillions promised for free college, universal health care, reparations and new homes for African Americans, free health care for the undocumented, massive investment in traditionally black colleges, and other “big ideas” that various candidates pledged.
What they all agreed on was that the “rich” would pay for much of it. The loudest in this declaration of class warfare was New York Mayor Bill De Blasio, who promised that “we will tax the hell out of the wealthy.” The growing Rousseauian chant to “tax the rich” is, of course, hardly new in politics. However, the current age of rage makes this call more menacing. Suddenly, the wealthiest citizens are being portrayed as virtual predators of the poor.
Senator Elizabeth Warren even seemed to be poking the chest of an imaginary tycoon in declaring that she was coming after “your Rembrandts, your stock portfolio, your diamonds and your yachts.” I previously wrote that Warren’s concept of a wealth tax appears unconstitutional. Nevertheless, Warren continues to pledge to impose taxes on the most wealthy (2 percent for more than $50 million in assets, and 3 percent for more than $1 billion). Not to be outdone, De Blasio promised to top her tax plan, with a wealth tax on everyone worth $10 million or more.
The demonization of the wealthy continued as candidate after candidate spoke of how the top 1 percent was a virtual class of robber barons who are avoiding taxes or paying little back to society. Other Democrats like Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez have called to increase the tax rate to 70 percent from the current 37 percent for income over $10 million. Just for the record, the top 1 percent of federal taxpayers paid 37.3 percent of taxes, more than the bottom 90 percent combined that paid 30.5 percent. The top 50 percent of taxpayers paid 97 percent of total individual income taxes. That means that the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers are paying virtually no income taxes.
To qualify as the top 5 percent of earners, your household needs to make $300,000 or more. To qualify as one of the top 10 percent, the cut-off is around $118,000. That does not mean that the wealthy should not pay more in taxes. However, Democrats are undermining their push for higher taxes by pledging trillion-dollar programs as if those would involve chump change. Want a house? Senator Kamala Harris will help pay for it if you are African American. Want free college tuition? Virtually all of the candidates are guaranteeing it. Hate your college loans? Gone, by order of Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders.
Warren created a lasting gift during the debate when she gleefully rubbed her hands together after saying that she would take some of the wealth of fellow presidential candidate and former congressman John Delaney, a self made millionaire worth $65 million. For Republicans, it is the gift that will keep on giving well into the 2020 election. Warren relished the idea of grabbing the wealth of Delaney and others as she promised freebees to every swing group of voters. Like many politicians referring to “my” programs, the glee is in the spending, not the making of the money.
With polls showing him at a practical zero in terms of support and currently less popular than Trump in his own city De Blasio left Rousseau behind and went full Robespierre in promising a virtual reign of tax terror for the wealthy. De Blasio declared that he “would go farther than any other 2020 candidate to reshape society.” He dismissed the need to explain where the necessary trillions in tax dollars will come from with a casual, “There’s plenty of money in this country. It is just in the wrong hands.” He promised to lead the proletariat and, “When I am president, we will even up the score.” He even promised to hit Americans who are renouncing their citizenship with a 40 percent “Turncoat Tax.”
He did not explain how he would deduce which people are changing citizenship for tax reasons, or how he intends to tax citizens of another country. That does not matter when you are “reshaping society.” De Blasio’s portrayal of tax increases as a type of caged hunt for fat cats is, of course, ridiculous. The problem is that the wealthy can leave. Now that New Yorkers cannot write off their higher taxes on their federal forms, many indeed are fleeing and, faced with a $2.3 billion budget shortfall, even New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has admitted, “This is the flip side. Tax the rich, tax the rich, tax the rich. The rich leave, and now what do you do?”
The loss of those top earners can be devastating. The top 1 percent, who are being constantly attacked by Democrats, pay for nearly half of the income tax revenue in New York City. A family of four in New York earning $175,000 will pay 25 percent of their income in New York in taxes, in contrast to the 14 percent paid by the same family in Florida. The problem is that the wealthy can leave not just New York but the country. Moreover, many wealthy foreign investors are unlikely to come to the United States just to end up in a De Blasio tumbrel on their way to the Internal Revenue Service.
Our tax system remains a mess and there is a real wealth disparity that must be addressed. However, we have to do so in a constitutional, logical way, including possible tax increases. Moreover, President Trump and the Republicans in Congress have proven just as irresponsible on spending as the Democrats. Both parties have continued to lift the debt ceiling and, with the new appropriations bill, Trump will have added $4.1 trillion to the national debt, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Our total national debt surpassed $22 trillion in February.
Rather than deal with the economic meltdown caused by such a debt load, Democrats are pledging to hunt down the wealthy, while Trump is bizarrely insisting he can wipe out our debt in eight years. They all are kicking the can down the road for the next generation to pay. In the meantime, class warfare is now a virtual political-platform item for Democrats. Aerosmith already has a theme song ready to go for the Democratic Convention. It’s called “Eat the Rich.” While not complaining about the “diamonds, yachts and Rembrandts,” it does denounce the wealthy for their “poodles and pills.” The rest is a good sound byte that you can literally dance to: “There is only one thing that they are good for. Eat the rich. Take one bite now. Come back for more. Eat the rich.”
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley.
It seems contradictory that Democratic candidates support open borders, oppose border security, and some of them even oppose the deportation of those who have been ordered deported by a court, yet wealth disparity is a cornerstone issue.
Illegal immigrants are usually indigent. They arrive immediately needing services, and they believe that the country has no right to moderate the flow of immigrants to a level that our infrastructure can support. Resources are strained, and the more poor come, the more the income disparity. Illegal immigration and the homeless drive a lot of the income disparity in California, and it most certainly is not the rich’s fault.
Yet another driver is the fact that too many high school seniors graduate functionally illiterate, or at least poor readers. This severely inhibits their future earning potential. https://www.apmreports.org/story/2018/09/10/hard-words-why-american-kids-arent-being-taught-to-read
Tax the rich appeals to a certain segment of the population who equate success with guilt, but it does nothing to address the causes of the gap between rich and poor. Rather, it widens that gap, as more employers flee high tax states, taking their jobs with them. This leaves politicians to swoop in and promise punishing taxes on those employers, and free stuff, which require even more taxes. It’s a vicious cycle leaving the people worse off.
Compare JT’s titles:
Here:
Eat The Rich: Democratic Candidates Plunge Party Into Class Warfare Politics
The Hill:
Democrats demonize wealthy to deflect from disastrous agendas
Just sayin’.
I would only worry about high tax rates for the wealthy if the same law blocked philanthropic gifting to 501(c)s. Currently, the rich can steer 50% of their Adjusted Gross Income into the work of social entrepreneurs (and thus away from government bureaucracies).
Social entrepreneurs are showing impressive results on a wide vista of human development fronts, and are outperforming government bureaucracies on a per-dollar basis.
The charitable deduction places a cap on the % of the wealthy’s income that can be raked into tax and spend government socialism. Do progressives like Warren understand this?
Every time I read about how Democrats are engaging in class warfare, I recall what Warren Buffet said a few years ago: “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
Democrats didn’t start this war. They are speaking the truth about what the billionaire class has been doing for years.
As everyone understands, the biggest drag on earnings for the impecunious working class is mass immigration, something in regard to which the Democratic Party is all in, Mr. Pants-on-Fire.
this important insight, and thank you for it, is lost on 99% of people
in the past roughly a century ago, there were voices who “Got it,” none the least of which was Jack London. You can see this in some of his short stories. ones that people usually dont read
he had a lot of insights that might apply today. Iron Heel was full of them.
“Warren Buffett and Bill Gates agree that the rich should pay higher taxes—here’s what they suggest”
Published Tue, Feb 26 2019 8:45 AM EST
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/25/warren-buffett-and-bill-gates-the-rich-should-pay-higher-taxes.html
‘Warren Buffett doesn’t think the rich in America are paying enough in taxes. “The wealthy are definitely undertaxed relative to the general population,” …’
There is nothing stopping Warren Buffett and Bill Gates from not using any tax deductions, and paying more taxes than they owe. There is even a separate line for those who want to chip in more.
If they feel like they are not taxed enough, then they can give all to the government over and above the average American income. That way, they would not be contributing to income disparity. They could sell their yachts and their properties, and live in a modest apartment. I notice that they enjoy their wealth, including the freedom it gives them to engage in philanthropy, an avenue that would be closed to them otherwise.
You are absolutely right Karen. Both Buffett and Gates have a choice as to what they should do with their money and they have demonstrated their belief that private individuals know much better than government as to how money should be spent. They could easily pay the taxes on the donations which could be spent by the government or lower taxes on the people while the rest went to charity but they don’t trust how government will spend that money. If they don’t trust the government, why should anyone else?
And Sanders wants a law to enforce a $15/hr minimum wage, while he pays his employees only $13/hr.
“Good for thee, but not for me!” (Sanders).
Indeed, the concentration of national wealth in the top percentiles is at it’s most extreme since before the 1929 crash and it did not get that way by accident. Perhaps JT should focus his mole hill seeking brain on yet another GOP move to solidify this result with the budget busting tax cut they enacted with our non-tax paying grifter-in chief. We’ll be paying his share of taxes again and so will our kids.
No, it pretty much did get there by accident.
As usual, Democrats cannot see the whole picture, especially blind to the options of the “super rich”.
If the challenge we’re discussing is increasing social mobility, then government bureaucracy is not the only option (progressives might not see it). There is a growing cohort of social entrepreneurs running 501(c)s, attacking the same problems, and getting good results.
Their companies are supported through a combination of government grants, private grants, and philanthropy.
It’s unlikely progressives (if they gain power to pass legislation) will think to close off philanthropy as a tax writeoff. They may wish they had, when it becomes clear that
super rich people can choose whether to pay the government taxes, or pay social entrepreneurs philanthropic gifts.
I’m not a tax expert, but I predict that the 90% taxation of the rich concept will backfire spectacularly to progressives, but succeed overall to society and social mobility by expanding the scope and impact of non-profits engaged in human development. The bureaucratic alternative has proved itself comparatively poor at developing human talent — the missing elements being lack of relationship building, and the inability of bureaucracies to adapt and reinvent themselves at pace.
If Elizabeth Warren is correct, and she would use the power of government to seize lawfully obtained assets, then those assets need to be moved offshore at once.
The rich aren’t robber barons. They earned their wealth. Elizabeth Warren, on the other hand, would turn the government into a robber baron.
We will now have to rely on the savviness of voters, the same people who not only voted in the Congress that pushed through Obamacare, but continued to support it after it was revealed that its passage depended upon the “stupidity of the American public.” That’s just grand.
Karen,
Sen. Warren is correct….In her mind. Elizabeth is an Indian too
A modest proposal…
Maduro must be a Billionaire by now.
What might life be like with a free healthcare system? Among other freebies
Democrats have trained Americans that they need them to get “what is theirs” (Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren) and “fight for them” (Hillary). Until Americans choose to work towards leading productive, responsible, self-regulated lives, it will never happen unless if it hurts. Suffering is an incredible motivator.
Defund all discretionary spending except a small amount to keep our US military operating to defend our nation, a fraction of the current $623+ Billion. Eliminate spending for transportation, education, veterans benefits (except for who incurred disability due to active military service), housing assistance and other types of expenses. Defund all mandatory spending except Social Security for those who are receiving it. Give working Americans the option to keep their money and not contribute to “Social Security & Medicare”. Otherwise Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment compensation, SNAP, et al, defund them completely. Let people keep their money, eliminate payroll taxes and reduce drastically individual income taxes.
https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2019-06/55342-2018-budget.pdf
Allow people to fail. People will take care of themselves, their families and their neighbors, as they see fit. People will survive if they wish to survive.
We’re either all in this together or we are not. Life continues to match forward irregardless.
The Democrats have lost what little sense they had. Union members, of which I am one, will do the math and forget all about who our leaders tell us to vote for. Many may even be less than truthful about their intentions particularly when they realize that they are considered wealthy by the new communist regime.
Indydog – don’t union dues go towards Democratic political candidates? Aren’t you stuck financially contributing to the DNC? I heard about lawsuits regarding that matter, but don’t know how it resolved.
Union longshoremen are now going to be considered the rich to be punished. And their own union dues may well help make that happen.
Thanks for that start Canuk, but one year does not make a trend.
“…despite the strong labor market, wage growth has lagged economists’ expectations. In fact, despite some ups and downs over the past several decades, today’s real average wage (that is, the wage after accounting for inflation) has about the same purchasing power it did 40 years ago. And what wage gains there have been have mostly flowed to the highest-paid tier of workers….”
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/07/for-most-us-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/
@Anon. That research was done in August 2018. It is now a year later, but clearly you haven’t got the intelligence to recognize it if you’re going to comment, you should use current data. You just want to try and find something that makes you look intelligent, and you failed miserably.
Wages have increased at 3.8%, inflation is under 3%. Since you seem too clueless to understand, that is called real wage gains.
“@Anon. That research was done in August 2018. It is now a year later, but clearly you haven’t got the intelligence to recognize it if you’re going to comment, you should use current data. ”
“The revisions show that employee compensation rose 4.5% in 2017 and 5% in 2018—some $4.4 billion and $87.1 billion more than previously reported. The trend has continued into 2019, with compensation increasing $378 billion or 3.4% in the first six months alone. Wages and salaries were revised upward to 5.3% from 3.6% in May year over year. And in June wages and salaries grew at an annual rate of 5.5%, which is a rocking 4.1% after adjusting for inflation.”
—
The 99% Get a Bigger Raise
New data show much faster growth in wages and incomes.
The Editorial Board July 30, 2019 7:29 pm ET
An assembly line worker packages items from an online order to be shipped out of a Target store in Edison, N.J., Nov. 16, 2018. Photo: Julio Cortez/Associated Press
Political discourse nowadays is enough to depress anyone, and the media don’t help by ignoring good economic news. But buck up, Americans: Worker wages are growing much faster than previously reported.
The revisions show that employee compensation rose 4.5% in 2017 and 5% in 2018—some $4.4 billion and $87.1 billion more than previously reported. The trend has continued into 2019, with compensation increasing $378 billion or 3.4% in the first six months alone. Wages and salaries were revised upward to 5.3% from 3.6% in May year over year. And in June wages and salaries grew at an annual rate of 5.5%, which is a rocking 4.1% after adjusting for inflation.
This is far more than the 3.1% year over year increase in average hourly earnings that the Labor Department’s jobs report showed for June. One reason for the disparity may be that employers are hiring millions of younger, lower-income workers, which may be depressing average hourly earnings as older, more highly paid workers retire.
The BEA also revised overall personal income up by 1.7% for 2017 and 2018 and transfer receipts down 0.7%. In sum, Americans are earning more and relying less on government. Personal savings estimates were also increased by $217 billion for the last two years and are now $1.3 trillion, which means Americans are socking away more of their earnings.
The personal savings rate was revised upward to 8.1% from 6.1% in May, which is much higher than the roughly 5% before the last two recessions. This should make the current economic expansion more durable since consumption isn’t being pumped up largely by increased household debt. Instead consumer spending has increased as wage growth has accelerated amid a tight labor market.
Recall how liberals blamed “secular stagnation” as the reason worker incomes weren’t growing faster during the latter years of Barack Obama’s Presidency. Yet employee compensation has increased by $150 billion more in the first six months of 2019 than all of 2016. Compensation increased 42% more during the first two years of the Trump Presidency than in 2015 and 2016. This refutes the claim by liberals that the economy has merely continued on the same trajectory since 2017 as it was before.
The economy barely skirted recession in the final Obama years, and economic policy changed in 2017. Deregulation has unleashed repressed animal spirits, especially in energy. Tax reform has also spurred business investment in new facilities and equipment, which over time should translate into higher worker productivity and wages.
Those reforms are continuing to pay economic dividends despite the damage from Mr. Trump’s trade policies. While Democrats and even some conservatives complain that workers haven’t benefited from tax reform, the evidence suggests otherwise.
Corporate after-tax profits increased by about $220 billion between 2016 and 2018 while employee compensation swelled nearly $1 trillion. Corporate profits declined 2.9% in the first quarter of 2019 even as wages grew at an annual rate of 10.1%. This sure sounds like an economy that is benefiting the 99%.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-99-get-a-bigger-raise-11564529382?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=2
Thank you Allan – I’d not seen this. Some excellent news in there – well, excellent for Americans hoping to see their country grow and prosper – not so excellent for democrats, who need Trump to fail if they’re to be elected.
If you think health care, college and housing are expensive now, wait until they are free.
We are an incredibly wealthy country with an economic system premised on nonpartisan achievement. Disincentivizing that system makes no economic sense nor political sense. Do the Dims want to lose? At least they’ll have a new excuse.
I don’t know that they’ll lose. Dangling “free stuff” in front of voters has ushered in the ruin of countries for many years. Eventually, when it’s too late, they realize nothing is free. Don’t worry about the cost. The rich will pay for it! You hate the rich, right?
The Democratic presidential platform seems to be each candidate trying to outdo the other promising free stuff. Who wouldn’t want a free house, free education, free healthcare, loan forgiveness, reparations, 6 months paid maternity leave a year…It’s like those touting carnival games. If you don’t tell them the consequences, and they don’t research it, they just might fall for the carnival tricks.
I’m a sailor. Talk to me about free rum, and you have my attention! 🙂 (these people are idiots, and anyone listening to their crap is even more of an idiot).
“Yes, but where has the rum gone?!” Captain Jack Sparrow
Our public education system seems to turn out a lot of ignorant graduates who understand neither civics, nor the downside to Socialism. And then they vote…
I do not know what to do to create a real improvement in the young generation’s understanding of the Constitution, capitalism, individual rights, etc besides homeschooling, carefully chosen private or charter schools, as well as parents ensuring their children understand these concepts at home. But if the parents never learned it, and it’s not taught in schools, where are their children to get this fundamental education?
Are you in the Navy or is sailing your passion? I prefer sailing over power boats, although I’m a passenger in either. Way too many degrees of freedom in the roll of a power boat once the motor cuts for Bonine to combat, plus the quiet of a sailboat is serene.
Sailing is my passion and my lifestyle, I live aboard and travel on my boat. Currently, I’m near Charleston, heading north to the Chesapeake before heading south again to the Bahamas.
I agree – this lack of education is a serious issue. It should be mandatory that children get two years of civics and economics courses so that they understand how their government works, and how the economy works. Then we wouldn’t have idiots touting a $15 minimum wage as the panacea for all ills, to name just one mistaken idea.
There are children who know how to put on a condom, but can’t tell you what the Constitution states, why the First Amendment is so important to their freedom, and why the supply of labour being affected by illegal immigrantion is important to lower income earners.
If it makes you feel better, it’s probably worse in Canada.
If Democratic presidential candidates for “wealth taxes” target the increasingly demonized “super rich.”
All those rich celebrities who got even richer, that were going to Canada if Trump was elected, might being going to Canada or somewhere….To preserve their fortune….
I think the current set of candidates are driving people away from the Democratic Party. The few that are sane are not going to make it to the next round.
On another point, do some of the promises made by the candidates constitute illegal vote buying, i.e., vote for me and I will expunge your student debt? And on that same note, why are they not offering to pay off my mortgage???? My student loans are long paid off, Offer to pay off my mortgage and I might change my vote. Not one has offered a bribe that would get my vote.
Payoff one voter it’s bribery. Payoff a whole group it’s politicking.
Tax breaks for the top 1% locked the wealthy vote up for the the thuglicans, is that what you mean. And then the top 1% spend their gain on lobbyists to press their agenda that the thuglicans run on. Throw in some religious and racial bigotry and voila the rethuglican platform.
After reading your post, I can see you’re quite aware of what bigotry is, since that’s what you espouse with your comments.
Again, the institutional culture of the Democratic Party is such that manufacturing patron-client relations (brokered by Democratic pols) and increasing the prevalence and incidence of politically determined incomes is their default state. An aspect of that is mobilizing people contra various social sectors which stand in their way. Street-level Democrats (including the dopey, malicious, and deranged crew who comment here) are adept at nothing if not projection, so fancy the opposition is motivated by ‘hate’.
The question at hand is for how long a productive political economy and well-ordered electoral and deliberative institutions can survive this sort of pathology. Not betting this will end well.
I suppose I am an optimist. I agree that it will not end well; for the Democrats. Fewer and fewer former liberals are willing to discuss the coming election. Many are embarrassed by the candidate clown show featuring the demented and the delusional. At this rate their best bet would be Hillary.
Good information, thanks for sharing. Kindly keep on writing good stuff.
JT, while focusing on the candidates who will never win the democratic nomination, let alone the presidency, overlooks that our president has plunged our nation into a literal racial war, compete with dead bodies.
What’s wrong with this guy? He’s the master of thinking small and puny while huge events go right over his head.
Larry, come tell the roofers, cement finishers, and insulation installers on my job sites that they have no ambition. Maybe you can show them how it’s done.
That was Obama. You can wake up now.
Dayton Shooter: Pro-Satan Leftist, Supported Warren, Sanders, Antifa, and Communism
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-08-05/dayton-shooter-was-pro-satan-leftist-who-supported-warren-sanders-antifa-and
Several weeks ago a Democrat Socialist threw a Molotov cocktail at a Federal Detention Center populated with children, in a stupid, vain attempt to burn down a concrete building and kill all the occupants inside including those detained innocent children. (Burn the city to save it, ya know?)
A few years ago a leftist shot and almost killed GOP politicians playing softball. The shooter had a list of GOP member names on a kill list.
Leftist demigod Obama incinerated with a drone strike 16 year old American citizen Muslim Anwar Al-Awlaki (same name as his father, who Obama incinerated the week before, also a US citizen). Obama incinerated both without judicial charges pending.
Did Trump ever commit felony murder of an American child citizen like your demigod Obama?
A leftist Antifa member is on video in leftist paradise Oregon, loudly shouting to his followers, plotting to lure their enemies down a street into a busy traffic lane to kill them all.
And I agree, Trump’s Tweets and foul language don’t help at all.
Do you think it encourages or discourages insane racists to kill, when the black member of the Squad denies that Trump is POTUS (3 weeks ago), and Pelosi said 2 weeks ago that Putin is blackmailing Trump?
Do you think that 20+million illegals roaming free in the US encourages or discourages insane people to kill? (I blame both GOP and Dems for open borders, BTW. It’s obvious the rich Dems want future voters, and rich GOP types want ever cheaper labor. Trump has charged about 12 employers for hiring illegals since Trump took office. He could charge 120,000 employers or more.)
Stay away from war zones and criminal organizations, and you substantially reduce your risk of getting taken out with a drone.
So you approve of Obama killing a sixteen year old American without due process? How droll.
There is no due process in war zones. Get over it.
Obama explicitly ordered the killings of these two in the full knowledge that they were Americans, and in violation of American legal process. That has been debated elsewhere – and possibly here – and it’s shameful you don’t know it.
But then, based on what we’ve seen of democrats this past two years, due process is not a part of your belief system, is it? ref Justice Kavanaugh, President Trump, etc.
American legal process doesn’t protect you if you’re hanging out in a war zone up to no good. That they had notional American citizenship is irrelevant. If they’d wanted the protection of American citizenship, they’d have been living in the Detroit suburbs minding their own business.
American legal process protects ALL Americans, no matter where they are. The government has/had no right to target American citizens. I’m not discussing the right or wrong of taking the father out vis a vis the fight on terrorism, that’s not the point.
There is a process that must be followed to do it – Obama did not follow that process.
Trump didn’t do any such thing, and it’s not there yet. But if you count up who’s killing who, the numbers are very interesting.
Democrats want to “Abolish ICE” and decriminalize border jumping. What did you think would happen? Did you think that Americans would agree to just leave the country without a border? The insane proposals have to stop or it’s going to flush more unstable nutters out of the closet.
And like over the weekend, some will call themselves this and some will call themselves that. But it will heat up. Right now, who knows, we may already be at a tipping point for this.
Gun control won’t stop it. In fact, it will guarantee it gets worse. Textbook LIC.
here is an idea from years ago, that like most of the excellent ideas from the great thinker William Lind, was ignored
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/logic-of-a-modern-militia/
It is always amazing to me that those who have all these grandiose programs and proposals always use “tax the rich” as their crutch. Stated in your article earlier the wealthy already pay the lion’s share and in reality isn’t the goal of the free enterprise system to climb up the scale to make a better life for yourself. The Democrats on the other hand use success and wealth as a weapon with which to demonize those same individuals. It’s funny that the people who are in favor of socialist programs are the same people who have no ambition, no drive and wait for the next thing to come along with free handouts.
Class Warfare has been waged against the middle and lower-income population for many decades. Fighting to make a more level playing field seems to really upset the ruling class.
Absolutely. Working wages have stagnated while the rich took all the spoils. Make the rich pay their fair share and that certainly includes the tax dodging corporations and Wall Street criminals and Banksters.
“Working wages have stagnated while the rich took all the spoils.”
Yes, but you would have to thank Hillary Clinton for a lot of the recent situation. She chose the opportunity to please Wall St. for big corporate money by starting the social justice mantra instead of confronting income inequality issues. Just look at her war chest receipts from 2016. I warned the wacky Democrats here in 2017 they had an opportunity to reclaim this message, and that if they didn’t they would be out in 2020 as well. Since everything has failed as far as their genius-level scheme to topple a duly-elected President goes, they are only stuck with–“well… those guys have the money, get ’em!” Going to be a long haul for Democrats. Hopefully the Democratic party will implode and leave the opportunity for new blood to emerge. Inbreeding is bad, and political inbreeding is even worse. Democrats need a JFK or something. Pretty funny an orange man runs on Obama’s 2008 platform and is demonized. Funny, but sad. Heck, since Trump as exposed the Democrats for what they are, maybe he’ll switch parties, become the Democratic President, and clean out the war-hungry repubs before they can stab him in the back. Makes for good TV.
Unfortunately for you, facts don’t agree. Currently, wages are increasing at 3.8% per year, with the bulk of that happening in the lower income sector. Next time, try Google before you comment.
http://workforcereport.adp.com/
If you want a novel and potentially doable approach, universal basic income is a thousand times better idea than more pure tax and spend moves which are the usual Democrat speciality. But, this would not enrich the bureaucracy, just help elevate regular people, so the Democrat leadership is marginalizing Andrew Yang as much as it can.
UBI sounds crazy but it deserves further study and consideration.