Envy & Insincerity

Taxation has become a sordid game by cynical- insincere politicians. The progressive Income Tax is a moral issue, President Obama and most politicians are amoral and self-serving. The top 1% pays nearly 37% of the taxes; the top 10% pay 70% and the bottom 50% pay only 2.25%. Fairness it seems is rather subjective.   

                                                                                                                                   

AGI	2.25%	36.73%	58.66%	70.47%	87.30%
TOP 1%		$
TOP 5%			$
TOP 10%				$
TOP 25%					$
< 50%	$

2009 Tax Year

In 1913 the Federal Government didn’t need the money from an Income Tax. It was funded by import duties and excise taxes on distilled spirits. The farmers, workers and merchants that envied Carnegie never dreamed that the 16^th Amendment would make them all indentured servants to the government.  Envy and Insincerity are the two most destructive human weaknesses.
 

STATEMENT OF T. COLEMAN ANDREWS who was an IRS Commissioner for 3 years in the Eisenhower Administration.  He had the following things to say about income taxes after resigning.

“Congress went beyond merely enacting an income tax law and repealed Article IV of the Bill of Rights, by empowering the tax collector to do the very things from which that article says we were to be secure. It opened up our homes, our papers and our effects to the prying eyes of government agents and set the stage for searches of our books and vaults and for inquiries into our private affairs whenever the tax man might decide, even though there might not be any justification beyond mere cynical suspicion.”

“The income tax is bad because it has robbed you and me of the guarantee of privacy and the respect for our property that were given to us in Article IV of the Bill of Rights. This invasion is absolute and complete as far as the amount of tax that can be assessed is concerned. Please remember that under the Sixteenth Amendment, Congress can take 100% of our income anytime it wants to. As a matter of fact, right now [1953] it is imposing a tax as high as 91%. This is downright confiscation and cannot be defended on any other grounds.”

“The income tax is bad because it was conceived in class hatred, is an instrument of vengeance and plays right into the hands of the communists. It employs the vicious communist principle of taking form each according to his accumulation of the fruits of his labor and giving to others according to their needs, regardless of whether those needs are the result of indolence or lack of pride, self-respect, personal dignity or other attributes of men.”

“The income tax is fulfilling the Marxist prophecy that the surest way to destroy a capitalist society is by steeply graduated taxes on income and heavy levies on the estates of people when they die. As matters now stand, if our children make the most of their capabilities and training, they will have to give most of it to the tax collector and so become slaves to the government. People cannot pull themselves up by their own bootstraps anymore because the tax collector gets the boots and the straps as well.”

“The income tax is bad because it is oppressive to all and discriminates particularly against those people who prove themselves most adept at keeping the wheels of business turning and creating maximum employment and a high standard of living for their fellow men.”

“I believe that a better way to raise revenue not only can be found but must be found because I am convinced that the present system is leading us right back to the very tyranny from which those, who established this land of freedom, risked their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to forever free themselves…”

                                                                        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._Coleman_Andrews

Why does Obama want to raise the marginal rates on select individuals making more than one-million dollars when it won’t solve the deficit problem?  When you start salami slicing groups like AGI over $10 million, AGI over $1 million and AGI over $500,000 - now substitute Russian-Americans for the first group, Polish-Americans for the second and Jewish-Americans for the third. It's all purely arbitrary and just as amoral. Especially when it does not solve the problem as it does not stop deficit spending, so much for utility and practicality. What is his reasoning then? Envy.  

“In business, the rise of the welfare state froze the status quo, perpetuating the power of the big corporations of the pre-income tax era, placing them beyond the competition of the tax-strangled newcomers. A similar process took place in the welfare state of the intellect. The results, in both fields, are the same.” Philosophy: Who Needs It, by Ayn Rand

Republicans need to make this a moral issue and link it to actually solving a problem- the only effective solution is to cut real spending as compared to slowing the rate of growth (of government spending). This salami slicing of citizens that destroyed equal treatment under the law effectively destroyed our constitution and the morality of the nation.

--Rhoetus