Tax the rich

When I saw the news about the man who shot the congressman and he was carrying a sign saying to tax the rich, I wanted to once again remind everyone that you cannot make the poor wealthy by making the rich poor. When Bernie Sanders started his campaign he followed the lead of Senator Warren and pitted the one percent against the 99%. Later the math showed that not to be as lucrative as first thought so they both moved away from that idea. This has been tried many times in various countries and it never works. In 2015 138.3 million taxpayers earned 9.03 trillion dollars and 19% of that or 1.7 trillion of that went to the top 1%. Of this amount they paid 465 million in taxes leaving them with 1.23 trillion. Now if take the rest of their money and give that to the 99% we will each get $8,900. When President Obama told Joe the Plumber he wanted to spread the wealth around he was on to something, the key word being wealth as opposed to income. Total wealth in the US is 88 trillion and 34.6% of that or 30 trillion is owned by the one percent. If we take that and give it to the 99% we each get $637,000 and now you talking real money. Why should Bill Gates have 85 billion? Isn’t one billion enough? We could take 84 billion from him and go down the line with the rest of the superrich. While many people feel that redistribution of income is OK they balk at going after assets. Maybe in a few years that will change!