In honor of Tax Day 2011 and Democrats’ impeccably timed renewed push to raise taxes on high income earners, behold the following lessons we’ve learned about economics from liberals in recent times:
• The most innovative and wealth-generating company in the history of the world, Apple Inc., destroys [8] jobs. So sayeth Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr., an iPad owner, who blamed Steve Jobs for taking away jobs from textbook manufacturers and paper mills. In other news, a Democratic Representative from West Virginia excoriated the “automobile” for killing off the horse-and-buggy industry.
• Cutting $352 million [9] from a proposed $3.7 trillion budget is “the functional equivalent of bombing innocent civilians.” This according to [10] D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, who was fuming over the possibility of a government shutdown two weeks ago. Given liberals’ complaints about the size of the military industrial complex and the expense of war, this is quite a bargain. How can we harness this technology of “Miniscule Republican Budget Cuts” to defeat Moammar Kaddafi’s forces in Libya?
• Constraining teachers’ unions’ ability to award themselves extravagant pensions and health care packages no one in the private sector has, thereby continuing to bankrupt states by keeping entitlement spending astronomically high, is good for union members. In contrast, making slight cuts to bloated benefits programs in order to prevent massive layoffs hurts the little guy. This bit of wisdom comes courtesy of the delusional, demonic [11] mobs who swarmed outside the Wisconsin State Capitol trying to undermine Governor Scott Walker’s implementation of his nefarious campaign promise to balance the state budget.
• Raising tax rates on job creators and wealth investors leads them to selflessly continue to create jobs and invest wealth at the same rate as before. This directly contradicts liberals’ caricature of the rich as selfless bastards who hoard profits and refuse to help the economy recover, but try pointing that out to a liberal. This also contradicts the evidence that every time marginal tax rates have been lowered—under Reagan, Clinton, Bush—tax revenues have increased, and every time they’ve been raised, tax revenues have decreased.
• Spreading the wealth around is preferable to increasing the wealth for everybody, if the latter means that the gap between high- and low-income earners widens. See, for example, Senator Barack Obama’s response [12] to Charlie Gibson during a primary debate with Hillary Clinton, in which he responded to irrefutable evidence that cutting capital gains taxes boosts federal revenue with the argument that companies should nonetheless be forced to pay more “for purposes of fairness.”
• The U.S. doesn’t have a spending problem—it has a revenue problem. Hat tip to Michael Moore, who recently bellowed that “America is not broke… The country is awash in wealth and cash… It has been transferred, in the greatest heist in history, from the workers and consumers to the banks and the portfolios of the über-rich.” Double hat tip to conservative site Iowa Hawk, which deftly and devastatingly refuted [13] Moore’s ludicrous claim.
• Paying taxes is the highest form of patriotism. See Clinton-era hack Paul Begala’s editorial [14] explaining why April 15 should be considered “Patriot’s Day.” Note that the first credential liberals always cite as evidence of their patriotism is not “I vote” or “I support the military” but: “I pay taxes!” For liberals, there is no greater moral obligation than federally funding cowboy poetry festivals [15].
• The amount of federal income taxes Americans pay is “about right.” This according to a recent Gallup survey [16] in which 43% of Americans approved of current tax rates and 50% thought they were too high—i.e., 43% were left-leaning and 50% were right-leaning. Much of that 43% no doubt overlapped with the 47% [17] of Americans who pay no federal income tax.
• The work required to earn a high GPA is completely, utterly different [18] from the work required to earn a high salary. One… doesn’t involve money, and the other does, or something. In the above video, the next generation of potential industry titans informs us that forcibly redistributing grade points among university students by taking from those with “excessive GPAs” and giving to the disadvantaged who have to work harder and hold down extra jobs is a terrible idea, but forcibly redistributing dollars among citizens and giving to the disadvantaged who have to work harder and hold down extra jobs is… a wonderful idea!
• When Democrats cut spending and refuse to raise taxes, as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has done—i.e., when they abandon their party’s core philosophy and govern like conservatives—they enjoy skyrocketing popularity [19] ratings and set their constituents on a path to financial solvency.
