Old Frank Talks about a Wealth Tax

“YOU KNOW THE TRUTH”

January 27, 2019

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

The ‘big’ news today is that wannabe ‘Madam President’ Elizabeth Warren has announced her plans to level a ‘wealth’ tax – apparently because mere income taxes are not enough to ensure sufficient ‘equality’ of wealth distribution.  Where does one begin?  Let’s start with income taxes – where the top 1% of wage-earners pay as much in federal income taxes as do the bottom 40%.  Maybe the senator also holds the erroneous conception that the ‘rich get richer’ when in actuality, and one finds that ‘mobility’ of income – not only up – but down as well — is the American way.  Fact, 70% of millionaires today did it on their own.  They are self-made. It’s not daddy’s money, nor that of rich uncle or auntie so and so.  They earned it themselves.

Now about ‘wealth.’  It is totally different from income.  You can’t spend wealth – unless you sell something to get cash to spend.  A lot of ‘wealth’ is real estate. Some is great art or jewelry and the like.  So, if a doctor or lawyer or broker or other professional finds success and builds an estate for a couple of million in an upscale neighborhood, that’s part of his/her ‘wealth.’  And Senator Warren thinks that such ‘wealth’ isn’t taxed enough?  Maybe she doesn’t consider real estate taxes imposed by local communities to fund schools, police, fire departments, road repair, snow removal – you get the picture – are really taxes.  The higher the property assessment, the bigger the tax.  Oh, and many communities, if that same successful professional owns an Escalade, or 7-Series BMW, an AMG Mercedes, Bentley, or a Rolls, or other nice ride, he/she pays an annual tax on that (those) also, based on current value.  Again, that is courtesy of local government– (and it ain’t peanuts).

Now another thing.  Successful folks don’t bury their ‘riches’ in the back yard.  They spend!  They eat out.  They buy nice clothes, nice cars, great audio systems, big TVs.  They endow the arts.  They take vacations.  All of that spending makes J-O-B-S, as in jobs that allow others to earn – and maybe also become ‘wealthy,’ and enjoy that upward ‘mobility’ thing.

Senator Pocahontas – oops, I mean Warren – also contends that income and wealth disparity in America are an aspect of ‘white privilege’  (there’s that term again).  Maybe Oprah – a self-made billionaire of color who started life dirt-poor, or the fellow who owns BET, or the thousands of other non-Caucasian Americans who’ve become wildly successful somehow acquired ‘white privilege?’

There are genuine reasons why some succeed and others fall by the wayside, but the Warrens among us won’t go there.  Taxing inert possessions is simply punishment. (It also runs counter to the one of the ‘Big Ten’ – those things they want to hide from our schools and the public square – and the one about “Thou shall not covet…”) Her side of the aisle shouts that the new tax law gave money to the rich – and yet, whenever the rates are dropped for top earners – government revenues soar.  That’s because the successful have fewer reasons to ask their tax accountants to exploit legal loopholes to shield them.  Not only Republicans have proved this phenomenon – JFK did also with great success.

Watch the lamestream media leap to support her big idea.  But, pay no attention to them.  You know the truth.

Old Frank