Excessive taxes do dampen productivity. Not being paid also dampens productivity. There is a balance for everything.

We need to free all people to receive their due. Nobody should receive the due of others. When unregulated greed controls the board rooms, the people outside the boardrooms don’t get their due. I am opposed to soaking the rich. I am also opposed to allowing unregulated greed to return the country to one run by the robber barons. Don’t overt tax anyone. Don’t soak the rich. Just stop the unregulated greed.

Regulations are needed. Greed does not self-regulate. That said, I still detest the idea that Obama is going to insert some fairness into the system with dramatic tax hikes.

No thanks. I supported Bush and those tax cuts and the economy thrived. We did very well and expanded and hired many employees. The chance of greater rewards encouraged more risk taking.

Excessive taxes dampen enthusiasm for both hard work and risk taking. Reagan understood this and opened the floodgates of American entrepreneurialism. If an alien was watching our economy above, he’d likely declare the Reagan years as an impressive and important tipping point.

Supply-side economics is one of the best ideas to unleash its power on our economy. We need not tamper with it. Intelligent regulation is one thing. Draconian taxes and complicated fiscal policy won’t achieve fairness. Attempts by the Left to employ ’simple’ solutions such as Soak The Rich merely end up harming the people they claim to represent.

We have all heard the stories about the rich not paying tax in the past. We have heard the stories about how the loopholes were eliminated with Reagan’s tax plan. We also heard about the only 1,000,000 illegal aliens that was really 3,000,000 and how Reagan’s amnesty would fix the problem because the law had a method to turn off the employee magnet. Neither of the fixes Reagan envisioned resulted in reality. The supper rich still have loopholes but they also have a lower tax rate with loopholes. We still have employers hiring illegals and the number of them is many times more than when Reagan fixed the problem.

I and millions of others lived through the redistribution of wealth to the executives which began in 1985 and continues to today. We saw our retirement plans raided. We saw our health plans destroyed. We stopped getting pay increases. All the while, we saw executives get ever larger pay packages and hundreds of millions in bonuses and post dated stock options. They got better retirement that sometimes included company paid living expense and travel. We see them get golden parachutes even if they destroy a company. We see an ever larger numbers of companies being taken private with the money the executives took from the company stock holders, employees, and customers.

Perhaps the a national sales tax (called the fair tax) would be a good plan if it had a kicker to throttle the excess greed of the new robber barons. Just add a paragraph or so that says something about people receiving over 100 times the national average income must account for their total income and face an excess concentration of wealth tax or anti-greed tax. No income tax for anyone who is receives less than 100 times the national average income. Have a series of brackets that increase to a top bracket at 1,000 times the national average income. This excess concentration of wealth or anti-greed tax would apply for anyone receiving any form of benefit (money or goods or services or stock options) in any structure including trusts or self controlled foundations.

If the national average income is $30,000, then 100 times that is $3,000,000 and 1,000 times that is $30,000,000. Anyone getting $3,000,000 per year and only have to pay a sales tax should be very happy because that is a very rich income. Anyone being given more than $30,000,000 per year should feel very greedy.

The law that Reagan signed actually lowered the top rate to 28%, but removed a good portion of the loopholes. If a person was not actively engaged in an activity, they were not allowed to deduct a loss, or the losses were limited. That was when the taxes paid by the wealthy began to increase. 28% of something is always more than 70% of nothing.

The liberals have managed to keep that misconception that the wealthy don’t pay much tax alive. They do it to incite class warfare and try to divide the country. That is the only way they can win, they can’t win with facts and issues. They must divide with lies and half truths.

Some people do earn more than others and should be paid more than others. Who can say what is fair pay and what isn’t? I don’t know the answer to that question but I do know that there is such a thing as too much pay for some and too much profit. A tyrant dictator can come from too little government or too much government. When a dictator controls a country, the dictator gets all the profit from everyone. All the profit is too much for anyone. When excess greed takes all the profit, it doesn’t matter if the dictator came about as a result of too much government or too little. The Robber barons of 100 years ago came about because of too little government. We have been returning to the robber baron control since Reagan.

I don’t suggest returning to old high tax on everyone except those who don’t pay in but get “earned income” redistribution from workers to non-workers. I do suggest a method for limiting the robber baron return. I don’t care who is being paid 1,000 times the national average income, they can’t earn that amount. We all breath the same air. We wouldn’t allow a few to deploy a method of charging others for the air we breath. OH WAIT. We are considering a carbon credit so that might be a bad example. Perhaps it is a good example because those who are leading the push for the plan are some of the new robber barons.

If you want to give up your freedom, then you should support unlimited concentration of wealth. If you enjoy freedom, you should fight to keep a balanced approach that allows the accumulation of wealth but also prevent the excess concentration of power and wealth in the hands of a few.

Today, a poor person has an apartment, color TV (LCD possible); phone, cellphone, cable TV; microwave, and a car.

Years ago, the poor were worried bout only paying the rent and the food bills – everything else was an extrangence.

Just wanted to wish you success on your new blog, and the new gig at FOX. Will be visiting regularly.

John Kosar
Asbury Research

I believe that if you want to see how people are doing, you should do exactly that – track people and see how they’re doing. The studies that do show a good amount of incoming mobility – people continuing to do better. There are certainly some whose incomes and lifestyles are not improving or getting worse. I believe that they get more press than the rest who work hard and have made real gains in our lives and don’t give what a CEO makes a second thought.