Tax Lawyer's Blog

Fellow tax blogger and tax law Professor Linda Beale links to five blog posts she thinks are particularly “worth reading.” Not surprisingly, two of them have to do with the evil rich (emphasis added): 

The Rich *Are* Different, Tom Bozzo, the Angry Bear, Jan. 5, 2010–this post deals with the question of just who is “rich”.  Bozzo notes a “key factor of a qualitative change in the structure of income” and illustrates it with a great graph showing sharp decline in wage income at the same time of a steep increase in capital gains and interest/dividends income–around $200,000.  He concludes that “if you can provide yourself with a better-than-average living without working, a very rare luxury indeed, you are in fact rich.”

A Tax Policy Determination Clue, Mauled Again, Jan. 6, 2010–Jim Maule takes off on the issue of wealth and the fact that Congress isn’t exactly representational on that score (something I’ve noted in several postings myself).  44% of Congress members are millionaires, compared to about 1% of the American population.  Bad news for ordinary Americans.

Tom Bozzo, the author of the first “worthy” article, claims that if you make more than $37,000 a year and don’t work you’re a fat cat. Professor James Maule, the second author, claims that it is somehow undemocratic to have a disproportionate number of highly successful people make our laws.

I say “pshaw” to both claims as well as Professor Beale’s endorsement of them.

Here’s why:

Attack the Rich Claim #1 - Tom Bozzo, Angry Bear - If You Make More than $37,000 a Year and Don’t Work You’re Rich  

If I didn’t know better, I’d say that Professor Beale is willing to endorse any claim made by anyone that derogates the so-called rich.

Mr. Bozzo – who in perfect wealth-redistribution form says that “the boundary of the rich is being set too high” by the Obama administration -  suggests with a straight face that anyone who has a nice life and isn’t working is “in fact rich.” And, rather amazingly, Professor Beale agrees with him.

This is pure nonsense. In 2006 the average per capita income in the United States was $36,714. That means, according to Mr. Bozzo, that any non-working person who makes $36,715 a year is a rich man (and, presumably, should stop whining when the government raise his taxes). Who in his right mind would consider a man making $37,000 a year wealthy, regardless of whether or not he worked to make it?

It seems never to have occurred to Bozzo and Beale that the rich man may have worked 90 hours a week for 25 years in order to afford his current life style while the pitiable poor man may have wasted his time playing pool and getting soused at the local pub?

Collectivists want to drop the “boundary of the rich” because that will make it easier for them to justify even greater redistributions of wealth in the future.

Attack the Rich Claim #2 – Professor James Maule, Mauled Again - Our Legislators are too Educated and Successful to Be Running the Country

The left has made a sport of lambasting Republican politicians like Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Dan Quayle and Sarah Palin for being too “averagely intelligent” to hold office while at the same time bemoaning the fact that Congress is comprised largely of highly successful, above-average millionaires.

Ms. Beale’s endorses Professor Maule’s attack on successful, millionaire Congressmen. Does that mean she thinks it preferable that less successful and less educated people run the country? If so, she has it backwards. We should empower representatives who have proven their competency to handle their own financial affairs before we entrust them with the nation’s finances.

It’s a left wing cliche to say that our legislators are not ordinary Americans and, therefore, are incapable of understanding the plight of the average American. It’s a strawman argument. Most American millionaires do, in fact, know what it’s like to struggle. Their “unordinariness” is less a byproduct of their wealth than it is a byproduct of the fact that, through diligent study, hard work and intelligence, they have managed to lift themselves out of the ranks of the ordinary and the mediocre.

Professors Maule and Beale have it wrong. Rather than elect legislators of ordinary intelligence, education and financial success we should continue to elect those who have demonstrated that they possess those traits to an extraordinary degree. Entrusting the operations of the government to the merely ordinary is a recipe for disaster.

Here’s a rhetorical question for the two professors: Only 30% of Americans have college degrees, but 95% of Congressmen have them. Do you believe we should encourage the electorate to vote for less-educated candidates to further the goal of Congressional ordinariness?

Final Rant

Why is it difficult for left wingers to acknowledge that wealthy people got that way through perseverance, hard work and sacrifice?

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a free country and if a man chooses not to persevere, work hard and make sacrifices when he is in his twenties, thirties and forties, he is entirely free to do so. But if he makes that choice, he shouldn’t whine when he’s fifty and broke about the selfishness and greed of middle-aged millionaires who did choose to do those things.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, “the fault is not in the stars but in ourselves that we are underlings.”

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