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Who Decides What’s Fair in “Fair Share”?

Who’s not paying their fair share? According to Elizabeth Warren, those who build factories and create jobs – meaning those who create wealth. Quoting her…

“You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did.”

My question is: Who are “the rest of us” that Elizabeth Warren talks about? The top 1% pay 38% of income tax, the top 10% pay 70%, the bottom 50% pay 2.7%. Who’s not paying their fair share?

The small business owner, who can’t afford lobbyists to buy loopholes, works 60, 70 hours a week, creates jobs by hiring employees, and maybe makes 2, 3, 400 thousand a year and what happens? He/she pays 50% taxes in fed income, state income, state sales, sometimes city income tax and city sales tax, property tax, fees up the ying-yang, and for what?

To pay for those road builders, teachers, police, firefighters, almost all of whom work for a union and get better pay, better health care and a better retirement than I do. But what they don’t do is create wealth. People who create products, create businesses, create jobs… they create the wealth that the government lives off of, when they’re not borrowing trillions more to satisfy their appetite for spending to buy more votes.

Warren Buffet, who certainly should know better than to complain he pays a lower tax rate than is secretary, pays a 15% capital gains tax, which is less than the top income tax rate. But the capital gains has already been taxed at the corporate income level (barring loopholes), then taxed again when you, the investor, collect dividends or capital gains. And any income that Mr. Buffet declares is paid at IRS rates. He’s worth 10’s of billions of dollars and has less than a secretary’s income? Come on! If so, it’s his choice not to receive a salary.

Another example of double taxation – you pay into Social Security, after taxes mind you, for 40 years, then when you actually collect, it’s taxed again. That’s if you can get it back from a government that’s already spent the so-called “trust fund”. Where is the government going to get the money? Raise taxes on the rich, of course.

And, after a lifetime of work and struggle, building a business, creating wealth, and paying taxes on every nickel you’ve made on the road success, when you die the government wants half again.

What I want to know is – what ever happened to “equal treatment under the law”?

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