You have heard it said that the top 1% earners in this country pay 40% of the tax burden but what you haven't heard (yet) is that since the government's tax take includes 70% more than it really needs those same top 1% earners are the cause of almost 60% (40/70) of the excess taxes the rest of us have to pay.

The 40% tax burden those top earners pay goes towards that 70% amount so that the BM's in our Government have a pool of money that they can use to create artificial needs that the 1% earners can then "satisfy" so that they can then get artificially high earnings (see the 5 million dollar man, Tom Dashel). For examples not involving past or present Politicians see the top "earners" in some of the "Non-Profit" Corporations (especially in the medical industry) and the top earners (Presidents et al.) in our Public Universities and Colleges. Earnings that, were they in a real free market, a true free market, an authentic free market they would not get because no one would pay it to them as none would need the services of suck ups and other status quo promoters. (What ... "they" are sucking up to is The System as-it-is rather than as it should be and could be. It should be a true free market system and it could be if the adults in our country ... decide that that is exactly what they want: a political-economic system wherein the "concept" of a "free market without separation of economics and state" is a contradiction in terms. They might even go so far as to fantasize that those who use the term--free market--without meaning separation of economics and state be handed a Cease & Desist Order by the rest of us who do not use the term this way.)

The preceding of course presupposes two things: one, that the majority of the top 1% earners are suck-ups and status quo promoters (see below for suck-up test) and two, that the 40% tax "burden" they carry isn't split at the benefit-of-the-doubt 70/30 rate between windfall taxes and needed taxes so that they really "only" cause 40% (=28/70) of the excess taxes the rest of us have to pay.

If this is all true then Ayn Rand is wrong--on yet another point. Somewhere in her writings she said something to the effect that if the wealth of the wealthiest were redistributed amongst us peons it wouldn't be enough to matter one iota. But what she forgot to say and/or apparently failed to notice is this: if we didn't have those top 1% earners our tax rate could be cut by 40%! (or more!!!)

I think such a cut is many many many times an iota.

Voila .... you do the (rest of the) math, Ayn Rand isn't right about everything (granted, damn near everything, but not 100% everything).

Gary Deering
PsycHHology Engineer
(helping phhilosophhy
build better humans)
07/20/09

PS
As a test to determine if a top 1% earner you might know or are aware of is or is not a suck up and/or status quo promoter ask yourself this question about them and then quickly accept the first answer that comes to mind. The question: did they earn their wealth BECAUSE OF THE SYSTEM or did they earn it IN SPITE OF THE SYSTEM?

My prototype answers for these for many many years were, (D. Trump, BECAUSE of the system; B. Gates, IN SPITE of the system, though recently when D. Trump said he wasn't a stock market guy, just a real estate guy my certainty about him took a hit).

PPS
Whereas a rich person I know who lives out west, was, I think, a VICTIM of the (BIGGER) system in that had he not had his Commercial Shipping Business confiscated (albeit with some compensation) by the Japanese Government back in the '60's (after which some years prior to this he had had some of his foreign trade business profits extorted by some Central American Dictator as he tried to do business there) he'd probably been ten times (or ten times ten for all I know) richer than he was (or is ... or was ... or whatever, as I don't know about anyone anymore given the recent GOVERNMENT GREED caused events in our nation's economy).

FPS
Who is Davy Trump and Bobby Gates and the Westerner?

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