Friday 11 September 2009

More on the Cold-Blooded Murder of English

Read a headline this morning; "Warren Buffet: 'Rich Need to Pay More" sent to me by a somewhat liberal friend.

This little fiction was advance further by various and sundry Democrats (e.g., Claire McCaskill [D-MO]), whose job it is, I suppose to conjure up tortured arguments to separate you from your money. Ms McCaskill said "[Mr Buffet] said rich people are not paying enough taxes."

Now, what in fact Mr Buffet said was that the taxes on dividend (and perhaps, other investment income) should be put in line with the tax rates on ordinary income, as a matter of fairness. He used as an example that he pays only 15 per cent on his income, which is largely from investments in, inter alia, Berkshire Hathaway funds, whilst his employees who are wage earners pay at a 25 per cent rate. Now, setting aside that in fact, few people in the lower income brackets (less than 50,000 per year) actually pay the 25 per cent marginal rate, once deductions and the like are taken, it's startling to see how this little proposition (that investment income ought to be treated the same as wage income) is transmogrified into a "the rich need to pay more" argument.

One can agree or disagree about the fairness of taxing income streams differently, and in this, I am in agreement with Mr Buffet, but it's intellectually dishonest to equate these two points. I expect hand-waving from the kleptocratic Democrats in the government. But for news agencies to be so duplicitous is quite alarming.

If the Democrats and Mr Buffet want to debate setting income tax rates of different income streams to parity, that's fine. If dividend income is to be taxed more steeply, then that is going to be done irrespective of the income level of the payor. But that's rather a different thing from saying, essentially, that we ought to raise the top marginal rates, which is the reductio ad absurdum of the "rich do not pay enough" proposition.

Given the shell game that Mr Obama and the Dems are currently trying, I suggest people pay very, very close attention to what they say, and how their words are reported.

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