moneyPresident Obama and other prominent liberals really want to raise taxes on the wealthy. Just last week, Obama mocked Republicans for wanting to shrink the $1.5 trillion deficit with spending cuts. He said:

[A] significant number of Republicans of Congress are insisting on a different approach. A cuts-only approach. An approach that doesn’t ask the wealthiest Americans or biggest corporations to contribute anything at all.

Which was totally news to me, because I didn’t know that wealthy Americans didn’t pay taxes. I was under the impression that the top 1 percent of earners paid 37 percent of the income tax. Pesky facts, always getting in the way of rhetoric.

In fact, it’s only the top half of earners that contribute to the income tax. The bottom 47 percent doesn’t pay any income tax at all. What was that about shared sacrifice again?

At first glance, it could seem reasonable to ask those that have the most to give the most. After all, aren’t our bosses making money off of our work? Why shouldn’t they be asked to give some of that back to help those less fortunate than themselves?

Because those people did nothing to earn it.

Every dollar that my employer is forced to give to the government to spend on scammers or studying shrimp on treadmills is a dollar that my employers can’t give me or another employee for a job well done. Employers want to grow; they want to hire new people and they want to reward the good ones so that they stay. 

Being human, I crave positive reinforcement. If I work my hiney off, I want to be compensated for it. Crazy, I know. When my employer’s taxes go up, I can kiss that raise goodbye. It’s being spent on welfare queens now.

What’s fair about that?

 

Image via yomanimus/Flickr