The Tax The Rich Scheme- A Meaningless Exercise in Futility

Let's see if I have this right. The people who work the hardest in this country we call America, are not paying their fair share in taxes. As the liberal pundits are quick to point out, the one percenters, those who earn $380,354 or more pay only 38% percent of the taxes collected by the federal government. Clearly they should be paying more, a lot more! Similarly, it is unconscionable that the five percenters, those households with a yearly taxable income of $159,619 or more pay only 58.72 % of the federal tax burden. Clearly these scoundrels, which include most of the small businesses in the country, should be paying more, a lot more. After all, how can we provide tax rebates to the 50 percenters who pay no federal or state income taxes if we don't force the rich to pay their fair share? Can't be done, even I can see that. There is one small problem with this tax the rich scheme though, and it is this. If we confiscated every last penny of those making over $250,000 a year it wouldn't be enough to run the government for even one single year, no not even 365 days. Now, I am not talking about a 100% tax on the income of the rich here, no I'm talking about confiscating, stealing if you will, everything they own- houses, cars, cloths, boats, kids shoes, everything of any material value at all! Well, you might argue, it's not all that bad an idea, after all it is enough to fund the government for nearly a year, that's a lot better than a sharp stick in the eye! The problem with this kill off the rich scheme, of course, results from the fact that if you steal everything the productive members of society have there will be no one to tax next year, or the year after. You can only kill the goose that lays the golden eggs once. Dead geese are incapable of laying eggs, let alone golden ones. The point of all this rhetoric is this. All discussions pertaining to tax rates are meaningless. Political discussions on tax rates only severe to distract us from the fundamental problem we face in this country, we are spending too much and we have been spending too much for at least 75 to 100 years. As of this moment, 8:19 a.m. on 6/2/2012, our national debt is $15,777,499,714,009.83 give or take a billion or so. It is, of course, impossible for any of us to comprehend such a figure, but we should be able to understand the implications of such a horrendous liability. The most important thing to understand is that our national debt is so large that it never can be paid off, not in a billion years, no matter how much we reduce federal spending or how much we tax the rich. We have been spending like drunken sailors for nearly a century and, at this point in time we have, for practical purposes, spent our way into bankruptcy. It's really as simple as that! Yes we are bankrupt as a nation, we just don't know it yet. Think, for a moment, of the implications of the financial mess we find ourselves in. The interest we pay on the national debt consumes about 20% of all the federal government collects each year in taxes. Small potatoes the liberals say; not a big deal, the republican politicians agree. Only the libertarians seem to get it. Big deal or not, here is the problem. Interest on the national debt is, at least for the present, manageable for only one reason. The Federal Reserve has kept the interest rates artificially low. Interest rates of 1% or less have had an extremely adverse effect on the economy as a whole, but low rates has made it possible for us to pay the interest on our national debt without having to declare a national state of emergency and bankruptcy. But, no one in his or her right mind can believe that the Federal reserve can continue to maintain the present low interest rates indefinitely. No, interest rates will have to rise eventually and when they do, it's Katy bar the door! Just think of it. If interest rates increase to their historically normal levels of 3 to 4 %, the interest on the national debt will consume every dollar the federal government collects in taxes. There will not be a single dollar left for, national defense, Medicare, education, aid to the homeless or any other of the endless federal programs. When that happens the Feds will have no choice but to deflate the value of the dollar so that the massive debt we have accumulated will be less burdensome. Will this kind of manipulation of the dollar solve the problem? In truth, I have no idea. One thing seems sure though, when that happens, gold and silver will be king! Well, I've wondered a little off the path here. The point of the essay was not to point out how hopeless our national financial situation is. Rather my goal was to argue that any discussion involving tax rates is a red herring designed to distract us from the real problem, our addiction to deficit spending. The problem, as Regan so apply pointed out, is not that we do not tax enough, it is that be spend too much and, I might add, have been doing so for nearly 100 years. As Reverend Wright said, "our chickens have come home to roost," and at this point there is precious little we can do about it.