Various blue states are facing towering budget deficits as federal pandemic payments end and expenditures rise. The result is a widening gap between the two parties on tax policies as Democratic leaders seek to avoid massive budget cuts in favor of tax increases. Two of the most economically moronic measures can be found in California and Illinois where leaders could be pushing high-tax residents out of their respective states.
In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom is seeking a billionaire tax that would target roughly 180 individuals who are expected to remain in the state, like some voluntary canned hunt. In Chicago, Mayor Brandon Johnson is facing the same exodus of businesses as California. His solution? A head tax on the very large corporations is needed for the city to survive. Even the far-left governor, J.B. Pritzker, is opposing the move as economically suicidal. However, groups like the teachers’ unions are pushing for this and other new taxes to support, among other things, a bloated pension plan for its members.
The Great Sucking Sound
California has long been bleeding tax revenue as residents move to states like Florida and Texas. Corporations have followed suit with major companies either moving out of the state or closing stores in cities like San Francisco. Despite the towering deficit, Newsom and the Democratic Party continue to spend wildly on a boondoggle bullet train and to engage in last-minute redistricting to gerrymander the state further. They have also moved to extend Medi-Cal to illegal immigrants at a massive cost to the budget. Newsom is also pushing ahead with a Commission to pay reparations to black citizens.
With a governor campaigning virtually full-time for president, spending is expected to continue apace until 2028. So, where can a presidential aspirant find money without losing votes? The obvious choice is with the wealthiest citizens.
California unions and liberal academics are demanding a new tax on those billionaires who have not had the sense to leave the state.
The “2026 Billionaire Tax Act” would hit roughly 180 citizens with a new tax demand to plug holes in the state’s health care system. While denied by Democrats in Congress, the “One Big Beautiful Bill” cut off funds used for illegal immigrants ‘ health care, which produced a shortfall for California. That is part of the money Democrats want restored, or they will keep the government closed. Another 10% of the funds would be used to support public K-12 education.
Two of the academics pushing this measure are UC Berkeley economics professor Emmanuel Saez, law professor Brian Galle, and Stanford law professor Darien Shanske. They insist that there is history to support the success of such wealth taxes in a few cities and states like Washington. Advocates are counting on the unions to get the initiative on the ballot, and they know it is always popular to soak the rich. Teachers’ unions have also demanded wealth taxes in states like Massachusetts.
Wealth taxes are in vogue among Democrats. In every election, Democrats insist that the wealthiest are not paying their fair share of taxes, even though the top 1 percent pays more taxes than the bottom 90 percent combined. It is an ageless mantra. Figures like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass) sought to ride the wealth tax into the White House, unleashing what she thought would be a class warfare over tax policy. She thrilled many on the left by declaring that she was coming after “the diamonds, the yachts, and the Rembrandts too.” Then, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, another Democratic presidential contender at the time, also promised that “we will tax the hell out of the wealthy.”
In the California effort, fewer than 200 Californians would bear the new tax burden —the wealthiest 0.0005% of residents. They will face a 5% tax on everything they own.
For years, some of us have opposed wealth taxes on constitutional grounds in the federal system and practical grounds in the state systems. Practically, you must create a new bureaucracy for the estimation of wealth in everything from art to boats to real estate. Under the plan, the Franchise Tax Board would require all California residents to declare their total net worth, including interests in private companies, real estate, art, and intellectual property. The individuals would then have to pay the debt in full or spread over five years with interest, with steep penalties for underreporting.
They hope to raise $100 billion in a flash and then divvy it up among their favorite causes. Of course, the problem is that, while some assets like homes are not mobile, the owners are. California expects these individuals to sit through a campaign where they are treated as the fatted calves for the slaughter, and then sell off five percent of their property for the privilege of staying. There is an obvious alternative that billionaires like Elon Musk have already taken: they can get the heck out of California. Many have already done so. Indeed, California moved to force those leaving to pay a tax.
In the meantime, there is no reason to believe that, once legislators can tap into wealth taxes, they will stop at billionaires as they move the threshold wealth line down for greater revenue streams.
These measures seem to me as highly dubious and likely to make things much worse. I will admit that Milton Friedman ruined me during my college years at the University of Chicago. However, California is already one of the highest tax states in the union. It is experiencing massive homelessness, crime, and other problems. At the same time, it is one of the most expensive places to live or have a business. In the mix of these elements, it wants to tell the highest earners now that they will be treated as basic digestives for Democratic policies. It will likely not only cause many to leave but will discourage others from coming with their income and businesses. Could you imagine a billionaire moving to the state to arrive just in time to be clipped for five percent of their wealth?
Rather than address runaway spending and poor management, Democrats and unions are treating the wealthy as static chumps who will not have the sense or desire to leave. It will be like a canned hunt with the cage door open.
Keep in mind that these are people who have spent their lives making money and optimizing conditions to make more money. The advocates are counting on billionaires just loving the state so much that they will stay at virtually any price. We will see.
As I discuss in my forthcoming book, Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution, there is a common myth that the top five percent of this country do not “pay their fair share.” However, putting that debate aside, the question is whether it will produce more revenue than it costs the state in the long run. As these politicians campaign on clipping the “fat cats” who are not paying their fair share, many are likely to follow Musk with their money and their minions.
Head Hunters with a Dwindling Game Population
In my home city of Chicago, the economic conditions are becoming even more dire. Mayor Brandon Johnson has proven nothing short of a disaster as the city has spent itself into a deep deficit. In the meantime, many businesses and residents are fleeing the crime and high taxes. Any first-year economics student would see this as a time to rebuild the economy by attracting new businesses and retaining existing businesses.
Not Brandon Johnson. The creation of the far-left Chicago Teachers’ Union (CTU) came as Johnson took office with gimmicky plans for city-supported stores and open sanctuary policies. When money ran out, he became increasingly desperate and inflammatory, often accusing critics of being racists. He has a $1 billion deficit and, rather than cut the budget, he has tried every possible measure to raise money, including a ridiculous bond that even liberals on the City Council said would send the city into a rat hole of debt.
Moreover, the Regional Transportation Authority, which oversees the Chicago Transit Authority, Metra, and Pace, is now expecting an almost $900 million shortfall by 2028. Again, the impulse is not to view the RTA budget and operations as unprofitable, but to raise fares and impose new taxes, including fees on DoorDash and delivery orders, higher tolls, and real estate transfer taxes.
However, even Pritzker thinks that Johnson and the unions are nuts on reintroducing a corporate “head tax.” Barely able to convince many companies to stay in the state, Chicago would actually make it more costly to hire Chicagoans with an additional $ 21-per-employee tax. Chicago previously tried a smaller $2 head tax, which was ended by Democrat former Mayor Rahm Emanuel because it was seen as discouraging businesses from coming to the city. Johnson thinks that an exponential increase will now make it work. It is like preventing the sinking of the Titanic by increasing the amount of seawater.
However, Johnson listens to the unions and particularly the teachers’ unions, and they want a slew of new taxes to support their bloated pension fund and other city programs. In addition, they want to impose a 5% levy on corporations with global payrolls exceeding $8 million, applied to all compensation paid to employees earning more than $200,000.
It would further suppress economic growth and increase the revenue deficits. At some point, the city will go the way of Detroit in an irreversible plunge toward insolvency.
Over the last decade, Chicago has lost one out of five businesses and currently ranks as a city with the highest commercial property tax in the nation. However, Johnson and the unions want to double down on more taxes, as if there were magical infusions of money with no consequences.
There is even a plan to increase Chicago’s “cloud tax” and a new 50-cent-per-user “social media amusement tax.”
The CTU is calling for a coercive campaign to force the remaining thriving corporations and institutions to pay more. In a publication titled “Chicago is NOT broke: millions on the table if wealthy pay their fair share,” the CTU called for Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT), a program where “wealthy universities and private hospitals that currently pay no property taxes” would pay a lump sum payment in exchange. My alma mater, the University of Chicago, is an intellectual hub that brings in intellectuals, research, and students to the city. The CTU wants to hit it and hospitals with PILOT charges.
It also wants to hit landlords with new profit taxes and penalize vacant properties.
With the recent passing of my mother, I gave serious thought to buying her home and investing in its total restoration. It is a beautiful old home, but I could not imagine owning a property in Chicago despite my love for the city. It is simply not economically feasible. It was a hard decision. I would love to invest in the city of my birth. However, the mayor and the City Council seem hellbent on destroying this city. In the meantime, the state is also spending wildly. The result is that many of the people I grew up with have left the city, and most have closed their businesses.
With the rise of Democratic Socialists in California, Illinois, and New York, these economic policies are likely to spread only to major cities. I fear that the result will be disastrous for our great cities. There is a perverse incentive for some of these politicians. Wealthy Republicans and conservative residents are fleeing these states, leaving Democrats more solidly in control. However, they are cutting off the top income earners and job creators. With the cutting off of subsidies under the Trump Administration, they must either reduce spending or tax those remaining.
We have seen this before, and it is not pretty.
If California attempts to tax a billionaire after he moves to Texas, exactly how does that work? If he no longer has assets in California to put a lien on, how do they collect? Is Texas going to let them come collect in Dallas or extradite him to California? Nope. All this means is that when a billionaire leaves he takes EVERYTHING with him – money, stocks, companies, etc. If he can’t sell his house, forfeiting it would still be cheaper but he’ll make up the loss quickly through no state taxes at all. And for California, good luck finding a new billionaire to buy it.
” If he can’t sell his house, forfeiting it would still be cheaper”
I think there would always be some way to get at least part of that investment back without California confiscating it, even if the strategy was “extra-legal” (e.g., renting it cheap for bitcoin to to some organized crime front that needs a respectable address). After all, there is no reason why the owner should care about the effect on his former state or community at that point…
Arabs, Chinese are in line. It’s harassment. Proving it shouldn’t be too difficult. It’s like James harassing Trump. Of course the DOJ should pursue.
The Kirk memorial and the weakling saying oh well it’ll be vandalized. This is cutthroat, little honey.
Plans to “soak the rich,” who are not paying their “fair share,” have worked politically, time and time again — and may well work yet again in next year’s elections. Governor Newsom in a recently televised press event for his 2026 Billionaire Tax Act declared that “the wealthy pay too little” in taxes and “the middle class pays too much.”
Some people might wish to argue about whether that is true or not, but no rational argument can be made on either side of this issue, because the words used are completely undefined. Nor is Governor Newsom the only one who talks this way.
It is one of the many signs of the mindlessness of our times that all sorts of people declare that “the rich” are not paying their “fair share” in taxes, without telling us concretely what they mean by either “the rich” or “fair share.”
Whether in politics or in the media, words are increasingly used, not to convey facts or even allegations of facts, but simply to arouse emotions. Undefined words are a big handicap in logic, but they are a big plus in politics, where the goal is not clarity but victory — and the votes of gullible people count just as much as the votes of people who have common sense.
What a “fair share” of taxes means in practice is simply “more.” No matter how high the tax rate is on people with a given income, you can always raise the tax rate further by saying that they are still not paying their “fair share.”
Advocates of higher tax rates can get very specific when they want to. A recent article in the New York Times says that raising the tax rate on the top one percent of income earners to 40 percent would generate “about $157 billion” a year in additional tax revenue for the government.
This ignores mountains of evidence, going back for generations, showing that raising tax rates does not automatically mean raising tax revenues — and has often actually led to falling tax revenues. A fantasy expressed in numbers is still a fantasy.
When the state of Maryland raised its tax rate on people with incomes of a million dollars a year or more, the number of such people living in Maryland fell from nearly 8,000 to fewer than 6,000. Although it had been projected that the tax revenue collected from such people in Maryland would rise by $106 million, instead these revenues FELL by $257 million.
There was a similar reaction in Oregon and in Britain. Rich people do not simply stand still to be sheared like sheep. They can either send their money somewhere else or they can leave themselves.
Currently, there are trillions of dollars of American money creating jobs overseas, in places where tax rates are lower. It is easy to transfer money electronically from country to country. But it is not nearly so easy for unemployed American workers to transfer themselves to where the jobs have been driven by high tax rates.
Conversely, there have been some reductions in high tax rates that brought in more tax revenues at the lower rates. This happened as far back as the Coolidge administration in the 1920s. It also happened in the Kennedy administration in the 1960s, the Reagan administration in the 1980s, the Clinton administration in the 1990s, the Bush 43 administration in the early 2000s, and most recently the first Trump administration eight years ago. There was a similar reaction in Iceland.
There is nothing inevitable about either a higher or a lower amount of tax revenues, whether the tax rate is raised or lowered. The government can only set tax rates. How that will affect the tax revenues actually received depends on how people react, and you can know that only after the fact. Sophisticated projections have often been laughably wrong.
Contrary to the way some people on the left conceive of the world, neither rich people nor poor people are inert blocks of wood, to be moved about like pieces on a chess board, to carry out some grand design from on high.
Even outright confiscations of people’s wealth, including whole industries in some countries, have failed to spread prosperity, and have even led to collapsing economies.
But politics is not about what happened in the past. That is left for historians.
What politicians are interested in is what they can get the public to believe in the present and to vote on in the future. Plans to “soak the rich,” who are not paying their “fair share,” have worked politically, time and time again — and may well work yet again in the 2016 elections.
Don’t the wealthy produce, create ALL the money in the US? There is small business too. The government purchases military needs and services. That’s WE using government purchase a military. The WE is actually the wealthy.
I can’t apply Pareto’s math formula. Anyone?
“Don’t the wealthy produce, create ALL the money in the US?”
Unfortunately, most of the the left (including many classic liberals) seem to believe that government printing presses “create” money & wealth.
Enriching One’s Political Party and big money-influence supporters is of primary importance for public servants. Tossing crumbs to masses while plastering over the process with positive media coverage for higher plebian polling and “democracy” are also part of the grift. Colorado Dems put 2 Propositions on the 2025 ballot to fight childhood “hunger”. Asking 50% of moron voters to support over 100 special interests in overcharging 6% of working taxpayers to pay for 100% of the program’s cost “over-runs” and expand its scope for perpetuity.
Milton Friedman described this corrupt, ruinous vote buying communist “Redistribute The Wealth” taxation numerous times with something like this:
“Politicians can raise taxes because they can persuade a majority of the voters that somebody other than them will pay those taxes, while they instead will benefit by getting a cut of what the tax man collected.”
Dr. Walter Williams said pretty much the same thing:
The message coming out of Washington, especially from our Democrat politicians and the news media, is that we solve our budget problems by raising taxes on the rich. If Americans were more informed, such a message would be insulting to our intelligence. There are not enough rich people to satisfy Congress’ appetite.
And that other black economic genius, Dr. Thomas Sowell:
High tax rates in the upper income brackets allow politicians to win votes with class warfare rhetoric, painting their opponents as defenders of the rich. Meanwhile, the same politicians can win donations from the rich by creating tax loopholes that can keep the rich from actually paying those higher tax rates – or perhaps any taxes at all. What is worse than class warfare is phony class warfare. Slippery talk about ‘fairness’ is at the heart of this fraud by politicians seeking to squander more of the nation’s resources.
“Tax the rich” is the most blatantly obvious Democrat communist fraud imaginable. But it works. It works so well that some Republican politicians wet their finger, put it up in the political wind, and see if saying the same thing will work for them rather than harm them on election day.
Besides higher and higher taxes, the “plan” for Illinois and California’s massive debt ? Federal money. They bank on Democrats controlling Congress to keep federal subsidies pouring in as they’ve done for many years. Not enough tax revenue ? No problem. The Feds are coming so we ALL pay for their malfeasance. Thank you, Jonathan, for an excellent article. Greg
“Besides higher and higher taxes, the “plan” for Illinois and California’s massive debt ? Federal money.”
Yup. All you have to do is look at the Democrat pork laden trillion dollar debt spending bills launched by Obama and then Biden in their first year in office. Hundreds of billions of federal taxpayer dollars that did just that: pay the debt ran up by Democrat states like California and Democrat city governments like San Francisco.
Those Democrat states and cities wasted the money spending themselves into debt to buy votes by spending on state and city programs – and then Obama and Biden with the Democrat legislative branch bailed those states and cities out with federal taxpayer dollars.
Ergo SAID, the laundromat for our tax dollars.
So Governor Nuisance wants to tax people leaving the state? They’ll need more money for barbed wire and cinderblocks. That curtain is full of irony, if you catch my pun, because it was these same fat-cat commies who financed the Left’s rise to power.
This is starting to happen all over the world. Xi is doing the same thing in China. His “reforms” are actually a beat down of Chinese oligarchs to keep the CCP firmly in control. Now our liberals are throwing our oligarchs under the bus. The globalist-leftist alliance always had too many internal contradictions to last.
The smart billionaires are already running to Trump for their dear lives. Of course, Mark Cuban was never that smart.
The final chapter will be when the Left finally implodes itself (as they inevitably do). The only question remaining will be what countries will they drag down with them?
I expect real bloodbaths. I expect many European refugees from real tyranny. They should be put in purple states to turn them red. Then blue states once Trump is in his fourth term.
But no commie refugees. Robespierre stays in Paris.
I would also suggest deporting American liberals to Ukrainian trenches. Colonel Klink to the Russian front!
Why doesn’t the left learn from history—NY.
Answer the question.
Because self-delusion is a luxury good with negative externalities only suffered by working people.
How can they learn from history when they keep re-writing it?
As the visionary Mamdani descends on NYC in 2025, many New Yorkers have forgotten that it was just 50 years ago that NYC was on the brink of bankruptcy. New York State then created the Municipal Assistance Corporation (MAC) which sold billions of dollars of MAC bonds. It wasn’t pretty then and it wouldn’t be pretty now. I don’t think that Kathy Hochul remembered the 1975 debacle when she endorsed Mamdani.
He’s worse than anyone thinks, Catherine. He only says he wants to bring reform or socialism to America. What he actually wants is to break the back of America because he believes that America is irredeemable and wrecking her will make the world safe for communist and jihadist “freedom fighters,” but he’ll never admit that to his useful-idiot supporters.
In a sane world, people who vote for this clown would be deported. They are poison. They are a cancer.
“He’s worse than anyone thinks, Catherine.”
Silly me, and I thought I was the only one believing that. 🙂 It’s like voting for life and death. How stupid can healthy people be when they vote for death?
Voting for your own death is known as being suicidal.
Following your logic, the Democrats are suicidal. I won’t disagree.
Kathy Hochul remembering? I doubt that. I don’t think she is old enough. I have a fading memory because I have always had tangible assets there. I still own an apartment in Manhattan and bet its price will fall, but then rise again. The state forces the City to maintain a balanced budget of some sort, so I don’t think Mandami has the full power to bankrupt the city.
I think those might have been the bonds sold to the public and sold at a “discount” of some type. People were afraid of bankruptcy, so they went at a “discount” to those who understood NYC was not going to go bankrupt. I don’t remember the exact specifics.
” I don’t think Mandami has the full power to bankrupt the city.”
Possibly true, but when it comes down to reining him in at the cost of Kathy Chochul admitting she made a big mistake in endorsing him, I would bet you that DamnedNanny gets a lot of undeserved leeway.
Kathy Hochul is a self-serving idiot. But she is a Democrat, so I repeat myself.
I can only laugh at your stupidity.
We know your first name, because oldmanfromkansas often addresses you by that name.
We know your middle initial because you used to post as S.E. Meyer.
There is no property anywhere in NYC owned under your name.
There should be a lifetime-achievement category for the Darwin Awards. Every year, a boomer liberal would get it.
Diogenes,
With what is going on in France, Germany, Sweden, Ireland and the UK, I could see a real, serious social, economic break down and perhaps a civil war. I have been wondering about some countries calling for war economy, citizens prepare to fight against Russia. Maybe it is not Russia they think they might have to fight.
Apparently in Sweden a Eritrean refugee convicted of raping a 16-year-old, the rape did not last long enough to justify to be classified as an “exceptionally serious crime.”
WTF?
In my book, rape is justified the use of lethal force.
It’s a mess, Upstate, and no matter how bad it gets over there, our crazies will never see the connection. I hope politics and the law can put them in their place. If they can’t, we got problems here, too.
The left is filled with kooks. We see a lot from them here, and they don’t make sense either.
Europe now has a time clock to determine how bad a rape was. Soon, they will start to accept murder; maybe they did already.
Paralegal duties will include beheading infidels.
Gee, Oh No, Wow, Who could know this would happen?!🤣🤣😂
“estimation of wealth”
One of many flies in this ointment. To fairly access wealth requires a sale.
Kevin T Kilty,
Well, if there is only 180 people, Newsome could form the Estimation Assessment of Tangible Materials and Estate or the bureau of EATME. These agents would go around, conducting mid-night raids and make up assessments of what value these billionaires have. Kinda like that NY judge who in his infinite wisdom assessed the true value of Mar-a-Lago.
The question every sentient Californian asks is: “Where is the money going?” They send a 1/4 billion out to fix a problem, but the problem remains unchanged and the money is gone. Obviously, people in charge lack the talent to guard the public till.
As Everret Dirkson said: “A billion here and a billion there and soon you are talking about real money!”
If anyone likes California’s new wealth tax, remember two things:
• The AMT of 1979.
• Exits and entrances to every state move in two directions.
*. Life after the rapture…
This is what Gavin Newson does best. He looks for a clean healthy balance sheet with plenty of room to spend and makes himself shine.
He max’es out the Credit Card (City S.F., State CA.) and runs away. Now he’s looking to do the same in Washington in 2028. It’s his M.O..
Governor Moonbeam (fmr. Cal. Gov Jerry Brown) handed Newsom a fair balanced State budget. Now look at it, S.F. and L.A. are Addict pits, Billions on the High Speed Train to nowhere went nowhere, housing is levered up so high that people can’t afford the property tax assessments. and the reality of the State’s credit rating is junk. Chicago has been simmering away in the same way., while everyone is looking the other way.
Because No One wants to take real-responsibility, relying on fiat credit to kick the can down the road. Gavin will run away and disappear as will the other ‘Actors’, acting as responsible people. They will never ‘Pay the Piper’. But there will come a time when a Generation does pay. As Western Europe is pressing for WAR now, as if Wars are an answer to resetting the Balance Sheet of Debt. War breaks out when there is no place left to run for these Politicians & Heads of State. And Debt is a Black Hole that just gets bigger and bigger and never goes away (it gets pushed around).
Truth is They are as Fiat as the Fiat Money that is used as stage-props to make them shine like Stars.
Gavin Newsom, Brandon Johnson, Congress (38 Trillion Deficit), etc. … have always been a fraud all along. Bankrupt personalities led to Bankrupt Governments.
But You & I are somehow responsible for this, all the while as we are to hold the Doors open for Them to escape. (Yeah – That’s how F-ed up it is).
Re:
AI Overview
The United States national debt surpassed $38 trillion for the first time in October 2025, with the total reaching approximately $38.02 trillion as of October 21, 2025. This rapid increase is driven by a combination of government spending and a recent surge in deficits, making it the fastest accumulation of $1 trillion in debt outside of the COVID-19 pandemic.
So Cal has gotten two permits out for home rebuilds after the fires.
Great YouTube watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ly1cPYSqgR4
Made for all you ANTIFA lovers who post on this forum.
TiT,
Thanks for the laugh! That was great!
As a now eighty-one year old Chicago born politically and religiously independent former primarily diagnostic industrial electrician (about thirty years) American male, try as I might I find no provision in the US Constitution for obscene wealth to coexist with abject poverty. In fact, I find no provision for wealth, at all. And, while I find the Preamble to the US Constitution to be as much an integral, inseparable and enforceable part of the Constitution as any other, I will now defer to Article I, Section 8 thereof to actually interpret “fair taxation.”
So, exactly, what are we being taxed for? From Article I, Section 8. “…to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States…” So, who created the “Debts,” what are we defending and what constitutes the “general Welfare” of the United States? Simply put, in contemporary (as opposed to “modern”) America terms, I believe I’m justified in stating that for any American citizen to brag about being ultra wealthy is for them to admit to being a traitor. What is being defended is the national wealth, not the freedom, liberty and justice we are entitled to, as merely propagandized these days. And, If one’s religious faith isn’t reason enough to make one willing to share the wealth, then the US Constitution should be. Charles G. Shaver
Charles G. Shaver says: As a now eighty-one year old Chicago born politically and religiously independent former primarily diagnostic industrial electrician (about thirty years) American male, try as I might I find no provision in the US Constitution for obscene wealth to coexist with abject poverty.
Chicago – home and birthplace to Saul Alinsky and his “Rules For Radicals” and Obama and his “Redistribute The Wealth”. Democrat communists, both of them. What a coincidence!
You have no control over whether you’re born poor, but you do have your entire life to control over whether you ultimately die poor.
Similarly, you can’t control whether communists walk into your life; but you can control which window to throw their envious, greedy and hateful asses out of.
Here’s what you didn’t find in the Constitution you so deliberately misread.
You didn’t find any prohibition on building wealth, and in building wealth building commercial enterprises that would employ others to begin doing the same for themselves.
You didn’t find any prohibition against simply being wealthy.
You also DIDN’T find a prohibition against working to become wealthy.
Nor did you find an article that supports Obama’s unconstitutional “Redistribute The Wealth”.
And no, you aren’t justified in declaring yourself a Marxist god who gets to decide what is bragging, what is “ultra wealthy”, and to be wealthy is to be a traitor.
What you have actually achieved is putting yourself on display as a traitor yourself – a communist whose beliefs are the opposite of the rights and freedoms that Americans have and that SHOULD inspire them to work to build wealth as hundreds of millions of legal immigrants have done over centuries.
Did you learn all that anger, envy, and bitterness from your electricians’ union?
I’m a few years behind you in age, but I’m comfortably wealthy because I worked my ass off rather than spending those years hating those with one dollar more than me, sucking up the lies of communists like Alinsky and Obama. Politically independent? BS!
Wow, fellow anonymous (?), only (better things to do today), a firestorm of ignorant, incompetent and indignant criticism. Simply put, I was second of five of a decorated WWII veteran who died unexpectedly on a VA operating table about a month before my fourteenth birthday. My mother was denied widow’s benefits for an obvious medical error related service related condition and by age seventeen I was working up to 50 hours a week during my junior year of small town Illinois high school (“B” average) and, along with my older brother sending an allotment home from the Navy, I was contributing my first 30 hours of pay to our family’s survival, and started doing my own income tax preparations. Most of my years as an industrial electrician, union or not, I was paying above average taxes for below average services, federal, state and local.
Due to externally imposed illnesses and injuries it hasn’t been easy but I’m currently comfortably retired on Social Security and a small pension from the employer who denied me worker’s compensation for a partially disabling (early retirement) on-the-job low back injury in 1995. For the past 20 years (this month), starting with the US FDA (with replies) about my early lay findings of connections between food allergies, added MSG, chronic diseases and obesity (obviously, now, in-vain), I’ve been writing to thousands of professional others of what I’ve uniquely discovered about the underlying causes of those, updating as possible, equally in-vain. For the past 13 years I’ve been trying to retrain physicists and other science professionals of the true nature of gravity, with similar results. What have you done for humanity and your nation, lately? I can be contacted privately via the already outdated “About” page of my mostly neglected video channel: https://odysee.com/@charlesgshaver:d?view=about
Wow, fellow anonymous (?), only (better things to do today), a firestorm of ignorant, incompetent and indignant criticism.
Wow Charlie! That’s best you have for a rebuttal is not to defend what you wrote, and respond to the criticisms of your BullSchiff Obama-like claims about what the US Constitution says? To instead launch into a pity party about your lot in life? That was the fault of The Evil Rich? As if The Evil Rich are apparently to blame for elected governments giving you what you claim were substandard social services and support in exchange for what you paid in taxes? Punishing The Evil Rich would fix all of that?
Oh – and then diverting to your personal crusade to “retrain physicists and other science professionals on the true nature of gravity”? Self-taught physicist as well as self-taught constitutional expert? How amusing!
Do you believe the Founders were also a firestorm of ignorant, incompetent and indignant criticism of your demands that the rich be seen as traitors, and your demands that they be punished for it by redistributing their wealth to people like you in acts of benevolence?
Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government. I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.
—James Madison
Did we just happen to be today’s whistle stop on your life’s journey on your personal crazy train?
Sorry, all, censored again.
“You have no control over whether you’re born poor, but you do have your entire life to control over whether you ultimately die poor.
Similarly, you can’t control whether communists walk into your life; but you can control which window to throw their envious, greedy and hateful asses out of.”
Damn straight. This present system, with the addition of the 16th Amendment, is nothing less than a government run, organized extortion racket. Screw all the communist leeches and the horse they rose in on. There’s a storm brewing. And it will be a doozy.
Anonymous, Marx couldn’t have said it any better. There are thousands of stories about people who rose from poverty and became hugely successful and rich in the process. They have been the creators of millions of jobs for the American people. I ask, just where would you set the limit. These men built the greatest railroads in the world. They built the Airplanes that you fly on to go to your happy vacation spots. Last but not least. Edison became wealthy when he invented the lightbulb that lights your room and the electricity that allows you to type your drivel on your keyboard. When incentive is destroyed innovation disappears from a society. In Russia they had a saying. They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work. I understand. A knowledge of the success of socialist governments is just not part of your repertoire. You simply believe that you just were not born with the ability to understand history so you just stopped reading it way back in your freshman year of high school. Yours is simply a fixed mindset.
“. . . make one willing to share the wealth, then the US Constitution should be.”
You’re confusing the U.S. Constitution with The Communist Manifesto.
There is no such thing as “national wealth.” That’s a collectivist fantasy. Wealth is created by productive individuals. They operate on the Trader Principle — by voluntarily trading their achievements for the achievements of others.
What you’re advocating is the Looter’s Principle: Other individuals work and create wealth; you confiscate the fruits of their labors.
It’s welfare that got you into this mess?
Now that the rapture is complete, you’ll need to brush up on your lying, cheating, scams, theft and gun in the ribs.
Sell snake oil. Buy some krill oil, creatine, beet chews is an idea. I’m working on bottles of the universal solvent (packaged prettily in gingham checks) . It’s water with faux rose scent. It’ll water down anything.
@Anonymous
‘Obscene wealth’ is relative, and I would even agree the wealth gap is a legitimate issue, but you have shared a nice, condensed version of a communist manifesto – a big load of cr*p compressed into a small pile to make it appear to stink less.
You might try reading the Constitution again, and if you find it distasteful, at least manage to have the gratitude you live in a place you are free to express that sentiment. You do not get to relinquish the freedom or autonomy of others simply because you do not like it. You certainly don’t get to overtly exploit others. Modern leftists seem incapable in their tone deafness and pomp to realize they and the globalists ARE the mendacious fat cats in 2025.
Snickerdoodle, the rich share the wealth when they employ you. Now share your poverty when there’s no employer. Your electrical engineering consult was purchased by the government? No doubt, and then you were taxed to pay your salary? Just keep your money, no tax? Treasury can print it and pay you into stagnation. Private industry pays more? Is that true?
So anon, I don’t understand. Wall Street will suddenly collapse or slowly and gradually? Banks will do what with loans and interest? Is that also a planned slow and gradual and explain the federal reserves plans?
Is it just one giant sudden collapse and then clean up where the workers takeover and share the no longer needed capitalist? Brick and mortar has collapsed so no taxes on property needed. Work in warehouses without taxes?
No need for innovation nor genius moves. I doubt Warren Buffet or Gates keeps money in FDIC backed banks anyway. Just cash?
How does it all work? No credit? No collateral except a day’s work? I just don’t get it.
We should be in for a treat today when X shows up to proclaim (as always) that Professor Turley is wrong on all of this. And he, X, is here on a mission from God to correct the professor and use this as a teachable moment. A perfect moment for him to use Professor Turley’s blog as though it belonged to him, to lecture and hector us on how this isn’t actually self destructive socialism and communism, but brilliant economics that only a Republican would disagree with.
Smash N Grabocrats.
Interesting to see Professor Turley’s full throated condemnation of Democratic fiscal management. It would almost convince me that he has become a conservative or at least an acolyte of Milton Friedman. I note that some economists have supported the wealth tax yet they make no mention of states like Texas or Florida who are #2 and #3 in population and yet are not in a fiscal death spiral.
Strange that Florida has more people than NY yet is in incredibly better fiscal shape and seems to control their spending and with lower taxes.
Texas has over 30 million population and California is at 39 million yet Texas has controlled their expenses far better and daily siphones people and business from California.
Nobody seems to really talk costs in any serious fashion in NY, Illinois or California. You simply cannot do everything and boondoggles need to be pronounced dead or never started.
It also seems that one thing NY, California and Illinois seek to do almost as religion is give benefits and healthcare to illegals. It seems they will break themselves and their states to accomplish that. Strange but then you might suspect the whole basis of Democratic power in these states are illegals. Wonder why that is. We know they can’t vote or can they?
These Taxes have been tried by France, UK, Sweden and others in decades gone by and the targets just get up and move to another country.
Myself I prefer a flat income tax, that means we all pay the same rate, the lowest of the low and the highest of the high.
People almost always vote to raise taxes on someone else. Maybe we need a constitutional amendment that prohibits graduated income taxes. States can do that also. Many states have a flat tax. Maybe the US should change to that.
I found that the primary driver of the debt is the unions. Florida and Texas I believe are right to work states. As to California, a former resident of 65 years, you have the unions getting the vote our for the local mayors, council members, supervisors on up. Then the government body appoints someone (a friend) to negotiate with the unions for their contracts and policies (all government work must be done by unions). In my mind this is conflict of interest at the least and blatant corruption at the worst. As an independent general contractor, doing residential work, my fees were approximately 40% cheaper than a union contractor.
GEB: And some states, like North Carolina, are on a yearly trajectory to reduce their state personal income tax (currently a flat tax of 4.25%) to a 3.99% flat tax in 2026 and beyond. Also, NC does not tax social security benefits and does not levy inheritance or estate taxes. And the North Carolina corporate income tax, now 2.25%, is on a decreasing yearly schedule and is scheduled to be ZERO by 2030. Ya think these could be some of the reasons that the NC population (10.4 million in 2020) has increased between 1% to 1.9% YEARLY between 2020 and 2025? And, the weather is pretty good, except for sometimes in August when you have to get out of the pool to cool off.
Nelson Mandella died in prison.
Happy Halloween 🦇
gdonaldallen brought up Mt. Vesuvius about Chicago. That brought a thought about California. It has an actual geology problem. The subducting Pacific Plate and the San Andreas and al the other known and unknown faults that lace the state. What are the chances that Sacramento Democrat minds are already mulling how soon to levy these taxes? Nobody knows when the Big One will hit. Better to get all that wealth while it’s still there?
“The rich don’t pay their fair share” has been the Democrat communists’ war cry even before Obama showed how well he could market it to an increasing number of envious, greedy, slothful and bitter losers.
I have yet to meet a single communist Democrat or online apparatchik troll (but I repeat myself) who can answer two very simple basic questions regarding that howl of greed and rage:
1. What percentage of all income taxes collected by the government do those Evil Rich pay right now?
2 What percentage of all income taxes collected by the government SHOULD be taken from the Evil Rich so that they are paying “their fair share”? 70%? 80%? 90%? 100%?
I have yet to encounter a Democrat communist, who can tell you what percentage they already pay now – never mind tell you what percentage of taxes would satisfy their avarice, envy and hatred.
If asking those two questions doesn’t make them drop their guts… just ask them what all the Americans who pay ZERO income taxes should start paying as a percentage on all their welfare, entitlements and benefits so that they’re paying THEIR fair share.
After all, it isn’t The Evil Rich all that government Redistribute The Wealth social spending goes to, nor are The Evil Rich the beneficiaries of all those magical government programs that are still with us in our longest endless war: LBJ’s ‘War On Poverty’.
There is no better analyst and writer on this than Dr. Thomas Sowell, who worked and studied with Dr. Milton Friedman and his wife (a brilliant economist in her own right, but who preferred to stay out of the limelight).
We continue to be blessed that Sowell, now in his late 90’s, still continues to write articles and speak on corrupt issues like Newsom, Warren et al marketing lies while attempting to buy black voters that they have kept on Democrat Poverty Plantations to harvest their votes. Doing so while fanning hatred towards The Evil Rich – including the ones they hang out with and who fund much of their political efforts, knowing that there will always be protection provided for them in reality.
The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy
https://www.amazon.com/Vision-Anointed-Self-Congratulation-Social-Policy/dp/046508995X
Economic Facts and Fallacies, 2nd edition
https://www.amazon.com/Economic-Facts-Fallacies-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465022030
Thank you professor Turley for this post. I would love to send it to one of my daughters that lives somewhere in Silicon Valley (my name is the armpit), but it would risk our relationship. Why people do not look at and see the facts is beyond me.
Santa Clara County has Measure A on the ballot along with Prop 50. The county owns four hospitals that are losing money taking care of illegals so they’re raising the sales tax to 9.75%.
They’re waiting ’til next year to tack on another 0.5% to pay for money-losing public transit. Millionaires and billionaires will pay, too!