President Joe Biden on Friday went down a seven-minute, nonsensical path to an all-too-familiar destination: class warfare.
It was an “us vs. them,” the “billionaires vs. the plebes” pitch to justify his hefty $3.5 trillion social-spending plan.
Calling it “my economic plan,” he insisted, “every element is overwhelmingly popular” — though people “don’t know what’s in it.” More, the real price tag is “zero” because tax hikes cover the cost. (And never mind, as Deroy Murdock notes, that the real hit is north of $6 trillion.)
Then the zinger: “I’m tired of trickle down. Trillionaires and billionaires are doing very, very well. . . You all know it.”
Hmm. First off, the world so far doesn’t have any individual trillionaires. And while billionaires of course do just fine, they also already pay plenty in taxes, as do mere millionaires.
Look at income-tax returns: The top 1 percent earn made just over a fifth of all income but pay two-fifths of all federal income taxes. The top 10 percent cover nearly half of all earned income but pay over 70 percent of all income taxes. The top tax rates are 35 percent on incomes over $207,350; 37 percent on earnings over $518,400. And state and local taxes come on top of all that.
As David Harsanyi notes, “at some point, taxation should be considered theft.”
Meanwhile, Americans making less than $75,000 this year are expected to have no federal income-tax liability after deductions and credits. Indeed, more than 61 percent of Americans owed zero federal income taxes for the year 2020.
Yes, Social Security and Medicare surtaxes hit everyone’s pay, but these are retirement programs that benefit the poor far more than the rich.
In short, the “rich” pay for a huge chunk of America’s safety net. Biden intends to enlarge that to transform the nation into a European-style welfare state — but those are financed by hefty taxes on everyone, including the VAT, which is effectively a sales tax and so hits lower-earners hardest. There’s just no other way to pay for “free” cradle-to-grave government “help.”
If Biden (a multimillionaire himself) really believed in everyone paying their “fair share,” he’d cough up that $500,000 he reportedly owes in back taxes.