Taxing the Rich

My liberal friend writes: If the so-called liberals as you claim were so successful in redistributing the wealth in the USA then we would not have 5% owning over 60% of the wealth, would we? The facts speak for themselves, the rich are keeping most their money by writing the tax code in their favor, then redistributing the tax money taken from the middle class and lower class back to themselves by funding wars constantly, the money for the wars ends up in the pockets of a few billionaires that own the military industrial companies. That is the simple truth, just follow the money and the truth will be revealed, not the Republican blogs you read, they are all false information.

I say:

I did not say that redistribution of wealth was working or that it is a worthy goal. I said liberals WANT to redistribute wealth. In liberal Utopia, everyone has the same of everything. There are no rich or poor people. That Utopia can never exist, of course, as long as a few humans have differing numbers of brain cells to rub together.

It is simply not possible to tax “the rich” and have everyone else avoid the tax. Let’s say the “rich” are business owners (including stock holders), and corporations.

Think about it from either the viewpoint of a government trying to collect taxes, or from the standpoint of an owner (a rich person). If you are the government, you can levy taxes on “the rich” whenever you want and in any amount you want, but what happens next? When you tax a corporation, they simply pass the increased cost of doing business on to their customers. The increased tax is paid by consumers, not big corporations. If you are the company owner, you will try everything you can to avoid the tax, and failing all else, you will pass it on to the consumer. Therefore, ALL taxes eventually end up as increased costs to consumers, period.

As you pointed out, there are many loopholes, so some of the taxes are not paid. Thank goodness! If the taxes were paid as the feds want, prices would be even higher to consumers for everything.

The bottom line is that the entire idea of redistribution of wealth is bankrupt. It can’t work in a society where any semblance of capitalism exists. It is a liberal pipe dream of “equality” that has no chance whatsoever of becoming real. Oh, they will keep trying, and it will fail again and again. You have said many times that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That’s how capitalism is designed. It is a system for UNEQUAL sharing of wealth according to effort. It can’t work any other way in this lifetime.

If you really want redistribution of wealth, there’s a system for that. It’s called Communism (which is a system designed for EQUAL sharing of poverty).