Friday, August 19, 2016

Share

Hillary Clinton has taken up the Bernie Sanders plea to take income from the rich and spread it around to help the poor. Her plan is not to give the money to the poor but for her, meaning the government, to decide how it is spent. Just how much she will have to spend depends on how high she wants to raise the upper tax rates. A quick review of income from the latest data of 2013 shows the following: In 2013, 138.3 million taxpayers reported earning $9.03 trillion in adjusted gross income and paid $1.23 trillion in income taxes. The top one percent earned 20% of the 9 trillion total or 1.8 trillion. They currently pay 40% of all taxes leaving them with 1.08 trillion. If we take the rest of their money and give it to the 99% each working taxpayer would get $7,000. While most people would be uncomfortable using legal means to take money out of someone’s pocket and putting it in their pocket, they are OK with the government doing this. If the government wants to send me money, I will take it but like most Americans, I would rather earn my own way and thus the emphasis should be on jobs not on income redistribution. The problem is that while government is good at redistribution it is not good at creating jobs.

No comments:

Post a Comment