by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
NRO’s\u00a0The Corner<\/em><\/p>\n About 50 percent of taxpayers don\u2019t pay federal income taxes. Almost half of American adults receive either the majority of or all of their income in some form from government. They are naturally desirous of even more entitlements, in the sense that even higher taxes on the top 5 percent might ensure at least some of the needed revenue to pay for them. And if that echelon must pay 70 percent or 80 percent rather than the present 60 percent of all collected income taxes, it would still not be such a bad thing, inasmuch as the circumstances surrounding their earned income must be somewhat suspicious. In the words of the president, the so-called affluent surely at some point must realize that they have made enough money and have hundreds of thousands in unneeded income that could easily be assessed with higher taxes.<\/p>\n The agenda of the poorer and lower-middle classes is championed mostly by an affluent elite located on the two coasts, who find power and influence in representing \u201cthe people,\u201d and are themselves either affluent enough, or enjoy enough top government salaries and subsidies, to be largely exempt from any hardship that would result from their own advocacy of much higher taxes and larger government expenditures.<\/p>\n Lost entirely in all these disputes over taxes, relative affluence, and government entitlements is any serious examination of whether federal payouts themselves consistently alleviate poverty or accomplish what they are intended for, or whether, in the age of high-technology, dirt-cheap imported manufactured goods and huge government subsidies, the notion of being poor itself should be redefined. The point is not whether the hundreds of billions invested in, say, a Head Start actually improved school performance, but, implicitly, whether thousands of constituents were employed in its administration, and, explicitly, whether its advocates felt a sense of transcendent caring in such public magnanimity (often not so easily evidenced by the fact of where they otherwise live or send their children to school).<\/p>\n Instead, we hear the rhetoric of Dickensian poverty, usually in terms of relative rather than absolute want, as in the president\u2019s constant referencing of \u201ccorporate jets\u201d for \u201cmillionaires and billionaires\u201d rather than any statistics about average American access to a big-screen TVs, serviceable automobiles, or personal computers. The president made this clear when, during the campaign, he rejected any idea in cuts in capital-gains taxes even if it should lead to greater national and collective wealth, \u201cfairness,\u201d he said, being the only issue. (I supposed that meant something like \u201cit does not matter whether I am better off if you are way better off.\u201d) And completely absent in the current debate of who gets more and who pays more is any adult discussion over the causes of being less well off than someone else, and whether such criteria can always be addressed and remedied by more government money.<\/p>\n Nor, in this argument over the big-deficit\/big-government\/high-tax\/redistributive state is there much awareness of comparative evidence: Did the EU redistributions to southern Europe result in economic prosperity and fiscal stability, do blue states have smaller deficits and better employment percentages than red states, do the blue-chip Obama economists \u2014 a Goolsbee, Orszag, Romer, Summers \u2014 still write and argue that their massive Keynesian agendas brought prosperity from 2009 to 2011?<\/p>\n Finally, if you add all of candidate and president Obama\u2019s class-warfare rhetoric up (e.g., \u201credistributive change,\u201d \u201cspread the wealth,\u201d at some point \u201cmade enough money,\u201d hundreds of thousands of dollars in unneeded income, fat-cat bankers, etc.), collate it with the reversal of the Chrysler creditors, the NLRB\u2019s attempted shutdown of the Boeing plant, the government takeovers, the gorge-the-beast deficits, the constant harangue to increase taxes, the creation of a new $200,000 annual-income Mason-Dixon line, and so on, you can sense how insidiously we have entered a new era of class warfare. Quite simply, Barack Obama will be remembered not so much for being the nation\u2019s first African-American president, or even the man who ordered the killing of Osama bin Laden, or even for his Obamacare, but as the president who grew government the largest, ran up the largest deficits during any presidential tenure, and laid out most candidly and confidently the argument of why the United States is an intrinsically unfair society and how that must be remedied by government.<\/p>\n Behind the current mess and shrill rhetoric in DC are these two larger competing visions \u2014 the belief that the Obama agenda is the road to serfdom for everyone, and the belief that it will result in a long-overdue equality of result.<\/p>\n \u00a92011 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s\u00a0The Corner About 50 percent of taxpayers don\u2019t pay federal income taxes. Almost half of American adults receive either the majority of or all of their income in some form from government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[41],"tags":[12,342,702,473,50,63,703,1020],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-Ei","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1034,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/why-not-soak-the-rich\/","url_meta":{"origin":2498,"position":0},"title":"Why Not Soak the Rich","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 13, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services For the last two years, $250,000 in annual income has been an arbitrary line in the sand of a renewed class war. Those above it must have their income taxes raised. Those below it are deemed more virtuous and so deserving of a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "December 2010"","block_context":{"text":"December 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/december-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2055,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-war-against-the-wannabe-rich\/","url_meta":{"origin":2498,"position":1},"title":"The War Against the Wannabe Rich","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 28, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services There is class warfare going on in this country \u2014 but it's not against the established rich. It's against those who are trying to become wealthy. President Obama has declared that those who make over $200,000 will pay higher income taxes. Caps on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "December 2009"","block_context":{"text":"December 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/december-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3312,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/make-the-rich-pay\/","url_meta":{"origin":2498,"position":2},"title":"Make the Rich Pay!","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 26, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Last week, President Obama reversed course once again and now wants to raise taxes on the \"rich\" making above $250,000 per year. 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The state\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "California"","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/california\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1980,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/postmodern-class-warfare\/","url_meta":{"origin":2498,"position":4},"title":"Postmodern Class Warfare","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 3, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services When President Obama's polls hit 40 percent approval, he fumed at \"billionaires and millionaires,\" \"fat cat bankers\" and \"corporate jet owners.\" In his sloppy targeting, Obama doesn't care much that a billionaire has 1,000 times more than a millionaire \u2014 or that his\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Political Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Political Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/political-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1234,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-nation-of-peasants\/","url_meta":{"origin":2498,"position":5},"title":"A Nation of Peasants?","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 27, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Traditional peasant societies believe in only a limited good. 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