Taxing the Rich

For decades, politicians have turned Americans against each other with rhetoric about “taxing the rich”. While the politicians have worked the masses into a lather, promoting bills that supposedly forced the rich to “pay their fair share”, we all missed two extremely important facts. First, there is no such thing as “the rich” any more than there is such a thing as “the elderly”. Sure, there are people who, today, are elderly just like there are people who today are rich. But, a huge number of those who are poor today end up, through hard work and frugal living, becoming rich tomorrow. Most people eventually becomes one of the elderly. Similarly, many of the poor eventually become the rich, a large number of the middle class eventually become rich, and a goodly number of the rich eventually become poor. We are not a nation of “the rich” and “the poor”. We are a nation of people who have talents, educations, a desire to work, and a healthy though not debilitating fear of risk. All of us have the opportunity to become rich and, when we do, not only do we help ourselves but we help others by creating new jobs and new products and new opportunities.

Second, by convincing us that we are a nation separated by wealth, the politicians have divided our house against itself. As they have encouraged us to bicker over what constitutes a “fair share” and who is not paying theirs, the politicians have expanded and expanded and expanded government – not just in terms of what government costs us, but in terms of the extent to which it controls our lives. On a per-person and inflation-adjusted basis, government today costs six times what it did in our grandparents’ time. From the time we wake up in the morning until we go to bed at night, there is hardly a single thing we do that isn’t taxed, subsidized, regulated, or otherwise controlled by the government. The government dictates what materials can and cannot be used in your mattress. The government requires that the carpet on which you put your feet be fire-retardant. The government requires that the water in your shower be fluoridated and chlorinated. Some states will require that there be either a fan or a window in your bathroom. The fan must satisfy government electrical codes; the window, government building codes. The bread that constitutes your morning toast is regulated by health codes, as is the butter that you put on it. The knife with which you spread the butter may not be regulated, but it was likely taxed when you bought it and the steel in it may have been subject to tariffs. Want to avoid all the health codes associated with foods? Then you can live on vitamins. Wait! They are drugs and so regulated by the FDA. The car in which you drive to work is an amalgam of myriad environmental regulations, many of which have no beneficial effect on the environment, and some of which actually have detrimental effects. The gas you use is taxed, and its production, transportation, and storage are all regulated. You can take a bus (natural gas powered of course) in an attempt to avoid these regulations, but the production, fueling, and operation of the bus are all subsidized. Your regulated, taxed, and controlled life goes on like this throughout your workday, your commute home, your leisure time, and your going to bed. Today, government has become so large that there is nothing you do that government does not influence in some way – save possibly sitting and meditating (provided you do it in the nude in the middle of the ocean).

In turning us against each other, the government was able to become this pervasive and expensive because we weren’t watching. It is time for us to realize that we are not Republicans and Democrats. We are not rich and poor. We are not black, white, and brown. We are not atheists, Christians, Jews, and Muslims. We are a single people. We the people are united by the shared opportunity to make ourselves into whomever we have the courage to become. We are not our enemy. Our enemy is the government that saps our opportunities, erases the rewards for hard work, and forces us to act as servants rather than as the masters whom it was created to serve.