I’m going to dissent from the majority and from our Frontpage article on Obama’s State of the Union address. I think most taxation these days is theft, in that it goes for services we don’t need and I don’t want, like paying government union workers exorbitant pensions, and funding school systems that don’t teach, and providing people who don’t want to work incentives to have children out of wedlock and to create large families condemned to live in poverty, which produce an outsize share of criminals who prey mainly on the working poor. I am against the progressive income tax, because it is basically unfair and provides an incentive to the 50% who don’t pay taxes to support government waste and encourage destructive government policies, like the current system of welfare programs.
However, Obama’s proposal to plug what is essentially a loophole – low tax rates for carried interest income – in the present tax set up is a good idea. Mitt Romney earns $21 million a year but pays at a 15% rate because of this loophole. This is not income he earns as an active investor. He’s a politician and has been for a long time. There are so many people who are multimillionaires and billionaires that taxing them an additional 15% would amount to a significant boost in revenues at time when the country needs them and would hardly be as punitive as a 35% tax rate on someone making $100,000 – which is what unionized dispatchers make as longshoremen.
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