Can’t these self-made millionaires do anything for themselves?
Dana Milbank, Washington Post: For the wealthy, less in taxes is not always more.
You thought only conservatives got mad about taxes?
Tea partiers, eat your hearts out: A group of liberals got together Tuesday and proved that they, too, can have a tax rebellion. But theirs is a little bit different: They want to pay more taxes.
“I’m in favor of higher taxes on people like me,” declared Eric Schoenberg, who is sitting on an investment banking fortune. He complained about “my absurdly low tax rates.”
So, they want to pay more taxes. Okay by me. So what’s stopping them?
They can, if they want, donate more to the government. But here’s the question: why would they? Donate more to the government, so it can be spent on…well, whatever the government decides?
If you want to do more, then do more. Yourself. Support food pantries and homeless shelters. Send care packages to the military division of your choice. Fund scholarships for local students.
If I was stupid rich, I’d go to Milwaukee and give a scholarship to each and every inner city student who got accepted to an institution of higher learning. Because inner city kids need to know that hard work will get them somewhere, and I don’t think their environment leads them to that conclusion.
What I wouldn’t do is: hand the money over to a vast and faceless bureaucracy that might do something worthwhile with it…and might not.
But, I guess, I’m not a self-made millionaire (yet). I’m not a successful entrepreneur who made a fortune through risk-taking and hard work.
Ironic, that such people would assume they need the government to spend their money more wisely than they can. Offensive, that they would expect the rest of us to do the same:
…the millionaires on the call get credit for putting (some of) their money where their mouths are. They are among 50 families with net assets of more than $1 million to take a “tax fairness” pledge — donating the amount they saved from Bush tax cuts to organizations fighting for the repeal of the Bush tax cuts.
How odd, that they’d dedicate the money to paying more taxes, instead of dedicating the money to whatever they want the taxes to fund.
And how ignorant: most of the people who benefited from the Bush tax cuts weren’t rich, and still aren’t.
Via Memeorandum.
UPDATE – Linked at Letters in Bottles.
UPDATE II - Linked at Backyard Conservative and Pundit and Pundette. And The Delivery. Thanks, guys.
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- Do What You Want With Your Money, Just Leave Mine Alone | The Delivery
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Comments are closed.
Hi Lance, I thought I might try to help you understand this one. Schoenberg wants people like him (rich) to pay more taxes, not just pay more himself. This is obvious, you should see that yourself, why do you not?
“And how ignorant: most of the people who benefited from the Bush tax cuts weren’t rich, and still aren’t.”
Could you back up that statement with some evidence? What do you define as rich? I will grant you that some of the tax cuts also cut lower tax brackets as well but the net effect was to increase the gap between rich and poor. To say that most people benefited ignores the relative “benefit”.
Hi Dean. Gee, thanks. Your first point is obvious, yes. Even if the story didn’t specifically state that they want others “like him” to pay taxes, it would be obvious. Liberals are never satisfied doing something themselves: they always want to force others to do likewise.
The thought process behind that is not so obvious. Many rich people become rich because they are A-type go-getters. Do-it-yourselfers. So this attitude of “let the goverment do it” confuses me.
Your second point: I benefited, and still do. People with children benefit. According to this paper from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (hardly a right-wing group), the middle quintile averaged $647 in benefits. Fifty bucks a month means a lot to a middle class family.
The top quintile benefited a great deal more, that’s true. So what? The top quintile also pays a great deal more.
Thanks for the link Lance, but it does not support your position, it says the opposite.
The early returns on the effects of the tax cuts have not been good.
■The Bush tax cuts have contributed to revenues dropping in 2004 to the lowest level as a share of the economy since 1950, and have been a major contributor to the dramatic shift from large projected budget surpluses to projected deficits as far as the eye can see.
■The tax cuts have conferred the most benefits, by far, on the highest-income households — those least in need of additional resources — at a time when income already is exceptionally concentrated at the top of the income spectrum.
■The design of these tax cuts was ill-conceived, resulting in significantly less economic stimulus than could have been accomplished for the same budgetary cost. In part because the tax cuts were not as effective as alternative measures would have been, job creation during this recovery has been notably worse than in any other recovery since the end of World War II.
Good Lord, Dean, it doesn’t “say the opposite.” My position is: the Bush tax cuts benefited more people than just the “rich.” This article confirms that.
My position is: if somebody wants to pay more, they should target the things they think are important themselves, instead of handing a check to an anonymous bureaucracy and hoping it goes well.
My position is: rich people tend to get that way through hard work and initiative, so it’s weird to see these guys promoting dependence on the government for their own altruism.
Those are the positions I’ve staked out here. Neither the article I linked nor your comment touches any of them.
We differ only in that you think people are rich mostly through their own efforts and I suspect that you also think people are poor because they have not taken the effort.
I think that luck has more to do with it, accident of birth, lucky guess as to the market, rich to begin with. There have been some that have become wealthy by their own merits but it sure helps to have been born privilaged.
Bush tax cuts benefited the already well off far more than tax cuts to the poor. The poor tend to benefit from government programs and those are cut first when revenues are cut.
Whatever you say, Dean. Without the government, we can’t even be altruistic. Repeal those tax cuts (moot, anyway, since they expire on their own), and if that hurts some middle-class families, well, so be it. Those rich bastards have got to pay.
Good article in the Boston Herald last Sunday.