How Much Is Enough?

Last week, Senator Bernie Sanders (Socialist-VT) held forth for hours on the floor of the Senate, giving full voice to the leftist ideals of shared sacrifice, shared burdens, shared wealth — basically, the idea that nothing is yours, but everything is ours. In the midst of his assault on individual rights and individualism, he posed an interesting question: how much money is enough for people to make and keep? At what point is someone “rich enough?”

Interesting thought. Let’s turn it around: how much money is enough for the government to take from someone? At what point has someone contributed their “fair share” in taxes, fees, duties, and all those other euphemisms for “the government wants your money.”

I have some very devout Christian friends. They tithe to their Church — 10%. Sometimes it’s a struggle for them, but they do their best to live up to what they see as their duty to God.

If God can get by on 10%, why should the government need more? The government just has one country; God has the entire universe. And, it can be argued, has a hell of a lot more responsibility than the government.

(Just don’t try to vote Him out of office. It was tried once, and didn’t end well.)

Right now, the tax burden is pretty heavily weighted against the wealthy. In 2009, the top 1% of income earners paid 23% of all wages, but paid 40% of taxes. (All numbers rounded for tidiness.) The top 5% took 37% of wages, and paid 61% of taxes. The top 10% paid 71%, the top 25% paid 87%, and the top 50% paid 97% of all taxes.

Which means that the bottom 50% (which decidedly includes me) paid less than 3% of the total tax burden.

The attitude behind the “jack up the taxes on the rich” seems to be “the government needs more money, they have too much, so we’ll take it.” And there are some fascinating presumptions behind that attitude.

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The first thought is that the government needs more money. Well, in one sense, yeah, that’s pretty self-evident. They’ve jacked up spending over and over and over again, and that’s gotta be paid for.

But here’s a radical alternative: why not simply cut spending? The federal debt has TRIPLED in the last couple of years. What the hell happened that demanded so much more spending? Shouldn’t we look first at cutting expenditures? That’s what most sane people would do when facing a situation like this.

Oh, yeah. I forgot. We’re dealing with progressives and the federal government. “Sane” doesn’t really enter into the picture.

Next up, “they have too much.” Says who? Who is anyone to say “they have too much?”

Yes, there are such things as “ill-gotten gains.” Cases like that need to be investigated and punished. But simply having a lot of money isn’t a crime — or even a sin — in and of itself. If someone finds a way to make a huge fortune, legally, then good for them. I don’t want to live in a nation where “too successful” is a pejorative.

Finally, there’s the “let’s take it.” There’s an old truism: “the power to tax is the power to destroy.” Taken slightly less literally, it reflects the nature of taxation — in many cases, it’s done as social engineering. Generally speaking, the government subsidizes what it wants to encourage, and taxes what it wishes to discourage. Look at “sin taxes” — taxes on cigarettes, alcohol, even gasoline are all designed to “encourage” people to use them responsibly.

Other taxes are directly related to services. Gasoline taxes are also used for roads. (Yes, I’m double-counting gas. It fits both categories.) Property taxes support police and fire, which protect those properties (and the individuals as well).

Finally, there are those taxes I call “Willie Sutton” taxes. (He was the bank robber who was rumored to have said (but never actually did say) he robbed banks “because that’s where the money is.”) These are taxes imposed on things simply because that’s where the money changes hands, and the government wants its cut: income taxes, sales taxes, capital gains taxes, inheritance taxes, and the like.

The latest fight is over the inheritance tax. (or, if you prefer, the “death tax.”) It used to be 55% for estates worth over $5 million dollars, but that law lapsed at the beginning of this year. There’s a push to reinstate it, with fights over whether it should go back to 55% or 35%.

Personally, I think it should be left at zero.

The theory is that if money — large amounts of money — or other assets changes hands, the government should get its cut. I have two problems with that.

First up, in pretty much every case, taxes have already been paid on that money. The deceased, in all likelihood, paid taxes when they got that money. Why the hell should the government take over half — or any — of that when he or she decides who gets it when they pass on?

Next, it often poses a hell of a burden on the heirs. Many times, the estate isn’t strictly cash. But the government will only take cash. So the heirs better come up with some serious green damned fast, ‘cuz the government won’t take IOUs. They give them, but they won’t take them. (See California and Social Security for examples.)

Let’s take the example of the late George Steinbrenner. He owned the New York Yankees, and wanted to pass the team on to his heirs. Fortunately for him and them, he died this year, so they don’t have to pay taxes on the team — currently valued at 1.6 billion dollars. By my math, they would have had to cut Uncle Sam a check for $880 million dollars for the “privilege” of having their father die. I don’t know the Steinbrenners, but I suspect they don’t have that kind of cash lying around, so they would have likely had to sell the team.

So much for “the family business.”

Further, most people in that economic strata tend to not use wills to transfer their wealth. They have very good attorneys to set up trusts and foundations and whatnot to get around that sort of thing. (One wonders why Steinbrenner didn’t do that — I suspect he didn’t want to give up personal control of the team, and might have been in denial about his own mortality. But I’m just speculating here.) The age of fortunes being passed by wills is fading.

This lady I know had a couple of mottoes that I hung on her. She knew I was largely teasing her, so she embraced “nothing succeeds like excess” and “too much is never enough.”

I wonder if she’d mind if I took them back and gave them to the federal government. She had her avaricious tendencies, but damn she was a piker compared to the feds.

Especially when the Democrats are holding the purse strings.