What is it with the latest spate of protesters demanding that “billionaires should pay their fair share”? From whence springs the myth that they don’t?
“The top 1% paid a greater share of individual income taxes (37.3%) than the bottom 90 combined (30.5%)… they paid a 26.9% individual tax rate, which is more than seven times higher than taxpayers in the bottom 50% (3.7%).” (Tax Foundation.)
The numbers don’t lie, folks. Here’s another myth buster:
“Bloomberg reported that the top half of taxpayers pay 97% of all federal income tax.” (Forbes.)
“Wealthy Americans already pay their fair share: Arguments to the contrary spurn or wildly distort statistics and cherry-pick anecdotal examples.” (Wall Street Journal.)
Lurking underneath Marx’s flowery language of brotherhood is an angry, resentful belief system that cultivates hate, envy, riots, murder and oppression: the bloody “overthrow of capitalism.”
Lawlessness in our streets is euphemistically explained away with pretty-sounding slogans, leaving a spate of innocent victims in its path. We see businesses, livelihoods, homes, looted, burned and destroyed; we see our law enforcement protectors and guardians blinded, bludgeoned, harassed and defunded.
The left’s simplistic view of wealth: a mythical “limited resource” grab bag of gold or cash, a battle between “haves” and “have nots.”
Two words: Upward mobility. Wealth is not a fixed asset. Wealth grows from industriousness and hard work. This is how “Moving On Up” works.
“What have we learned about Marxism’s ideological root….[that it] destroys legal order, political opposition, human rights? Do we have some idea of the death toll that has in every case followed the triumph of the ‘vanguard party’? Do we have an inkling of the human cost of collectivism, or of what the gulag meant in terms of the humiliation and destruction of its victims?” (Spectator.)
Sean McLaughlin
Valencia
