The Tax Lawyer's Blog

I have said many times before that the goal of the pro-tax left is not to raise the dinghies of the poor, but rather to sink the Yachts of the rich.

Kay Bell sums it up in her post Taxes as a tool of economic equality (emphasis added):

Americans are quite proud of, among other things, the line in our Declaration of Independence about all men being created equal.

For purposes of this post, we’ll let slide that the Revolutionary-era authors’ definition of men excluded men of color and all women. Now, for the most part, we try to hew to the equality ideal.

But it’s tough, especially in hard economic times.

Practically and financially speaking, it’s obvious that some people are more equal than others. That’s the catalyst of the Occupy Wall Street and Elsewhere movement.

But there is a way to promote equality, say participants in a recent international gathering.

Taxes.

I can’t figure out whether these are Ms. Bell’s beliefs or she is merely paraphrasing the beliefs of the pro-tax, big government crowd. I guess it doesn’t really matter. They befuddle me no matter who’s spouting them.

In any case, I can’t let slide Ms. Bell’s assertion that the drafters and signers of the Declaration of Independence intended to exclude women and blacks from the phrase “all men are created equal.” That is simply and utterly wrong. The word “men” was used by the drafters in the same way that the word “mankind” is used today. It was meant to include all human beings.¹

Also, Ms. Bell, or whomever she’s paraphrasing, makes the typical error most pro-equality liberals make when she assumes that the phrase “all men are created equal” means equality of outcomes.

This is precisely what I and many others have been warning folks about for years: Progressives are every bit as happy to tear down the rich as they are to build up the poor. Either outcome is acceptable to them because their goal is equality of results. And there is no better or quicker way to tear down the rich than through confiscatory taxation.

More nuanced minds will be quick to recognize that the wealth gap can be reduced simply by taking wealth away from the rich and flushing it down the toilet. You don’t have to redistribute a single cent to the poor in order to achieve the goal of wealth gap reduction.

Here’s the rest of Ms. Bell’s highly revealing post:

More than 400 senior tax policymakers and administrators from almost 90  countries participated last week in the International Tax Dialogue.

The event was a joint initiative of the International Monetary Fund, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Bank, the European Commission, the Inter-American Development Band and the Inter-American Center of Tax Administrations.

During the two-and-a-half day conference, the role of taxation in reducing inequalities in income and wealth was a key topic. Conference attendees sought to identify which tax policies have failed and  which could play a greater role in reducing inequalities in the future.

The consensus:

Income inequality between countries has diminished  significantly as economic reform in many emerging economies has spurred  growth, significantly reducing levels of absolute poverty globally.

However, recent decades have also seen significant changes in the  distribution of both wealth and incomes within countries, with notable  increases in the share of income enjoyed by those at the very top of the  income distribution in many countries.

A rising tide has not lifted all  boats.

The left is incapable of increasing the wealth of the poor and the middle class. It knows only one way to reduce the inequality gap and that is to limit the amount of wealth rich people are permitted to accumulate.² It enforces this limit through confiscatory taxation.

Footnotes:

¹  Merriam Webster provides the origin of the word “man”

Bookmark & Share: