A Redistributive State of the Union | Michael D. Tanner | Cato Institute: Commentary

A Redistributive State of the Union | Michael D. Tanner | Cato Institute: Commentary: 'the president’s narrative ignores the fact that Buffett’s income had already been taxed at the corporate level. When the effect of both taxes is combined, the real effective tax rate is closer to 45 percent. That is quite a high rate on an inherently risky activity — investing — that our tax code should encourage.

And significantly, note that the president’s solution to this supposed problem is not to reduce taxes on Ms. Bosanek, but to raise them on Mr. Buffett.

That is because the president sees the Buffett rule and his complaints about other tax loopholes as simply a tactic, the camel’s nose under the tent, in his desire for more money for the federal government. That is why his actual tax proposals, hidden behind rhetoric about “millionaires and billionaires” and the “wealthiest 1 percent,” would actually raise taxes on people earning as little as $200,000 per year, as well as many small businesses. And many of his proposals will probably hit people with incomes even lower.'

'The president might have given lip service to the need to reduce deficits and the debt, but most of his speech was a laundry list of government programs to spend more money doing more things for more people.'

'But the evidence is now inescapable that the best way to achieve that goal is not through welfare-state redistribution of wealth, but through the creation of more wealth. We should judge the success of our efforts not by how much charity we provide to the poor, but by how few people need such charity.

Would it not be a better America if we could make it possible for Ms. Joseph to get a better job so that she could afford her mortgage and her gas? For that matter, wouldn’t we like a country where she could afford a bigger house and a second car? Nothing that the president has proposed would help bring that about.'