The Myth of Paying Government a “Fair Share”

Hillary Clinton bemoans what she sees as unfair tax policy, arguing it’s wrong “when hedge fund managers pay a lower tax rate than truck drivers or nurses.”

You hear this all the time. About the better off paying “their fair share.”

Keep in mind that this does not only apply to the very rich. It applies to all of us. The more productive and successful you become, the more subject you are to paying your “fair share.”

What does it mean to pay your “share” of something?

Normally, it refers to situations you willingly chose. You take a job, and you’re expected to do your share of the responsibilities. You form a business association or partnership, and you’re expected to do your part. You pursue a friendship or a marriage, and you’re expected to contribute your part. If you’re rational, you want and expect to do so.

And of course, we have all been children. As children, we were not yet capable of choosing much. In exchange for caring for us when we’re helpless, we follow the demands of our parents/elders, willingly or resentfully, in exchange for survival.

Individual, voting age citizens are not children. Are we?

Hillary Clinton seems to think so. So does every other politician I know of running for office.

The premise of these elected mommies and daddies? We are all children, and we must be expected to follow their rules. These rules are not merely for our own good, but for the sake of whomever or whatever they consider good.

According to these elected mommies and daddies, our money and our property do not belong to us. If we make beyond a certain amount of money, by freely persuading others to give that money to us, then we’re obliged to hand over whatever portion of the money these elected mommies and daddies see fit.

By what right does a person of Hillary Clinton’s unsavory character decide what “share” is anyone’s to pay?

By what right does anyone get to decide this?

Yes, we need a government. But whatever the government of a free country would cost, it would not come close to $18 trillion in debt, and counting.

Should hedge fund managers pay a lower tax rate than truck drivers? No. But they should not pay a higher rate, either. You should not be punished for making more money. Choosing and thriving in a higher-paying profession is not a crime; or at least, it should not be.

The real solution is to repeal or at least phase out most of what the federal government currently does, and resume the responsibilities limited to it in the Constitution. This would mean much lower taxes (if any) for everyone.

Today, as the government has taken over more and more of what should have been done by the private sector, we suffer through one prolonged recession after another, a perpetual boom-and-bust cycle. Government’s solution? More government, to be followed by more boom-and-bust, more corruption, and then…you guessed it, still more government.

That’s what we get for assuming that people like Hillary Clinton know better how to run an economy than actual business owners and customers — the ones with real “skin in the game.”

Do the math. You can expropriate every penny of every single person Hillary Clinton deems “too rich”. Take 100 percent of the earnings of every single hedge fund manager in existence. It will not come close to eliminating the $18 trillion national debt, to say nothing of all the programs yet to come.

In order to keep this denial-fest going, politicians have no choice but to make us feel guilty. Or envious. They’re two sides of the same coin. They cannot make us feel anything, without our consent; but they keep getting away with it, so who can blame them for persisting?

Hillary’s banking on envy. Let’s face it; this usually works. Barack Obama’s election and reelection proved you do not have to be especially charming, enlightened or intelligent to sell envy to a plurality of the electorate.

Mommies and daddies sometimes abuse their kids. They sometimes lie to their kids, as with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, or for more malevolent reasons.

Hillary Clinton, like most politicians, appeals to the worst within us: envy, resentment, chronic victimization and a sense of entitlement to the unearned. She exploits these human fallibilities for the sake of her own lust for power, as well as her own hefty bank account.

There’s no “fair share” of anything, not unless you agreed to participate in the activity for which shares are required.

Government has no right to force this on us. The sooner we recognize this fact, the sooner all of these grotesque, envy-baiting politicians will be out of work … for good.

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