I’ve talked about taxes in my Ramblings before. But of course I’m a middle class guy. It’s easy to say “soak the rich” when you’re not. And Warren Buffet, well, he’s so rich that money stops meaning anything. But in an extremely excellent article, Stephen King who is “baby rich” as he puts it called Tax Me For f@%&’s Sake he gives you all the reasons that people in his income bracket should be taxed at a higher rate than they are. And he’s very direct and eloquent about it.
As he reminds us:
And hey, why don’t we get real about this? Most rich folks paying 28 percent taxes do not give out another 28 percent of their income to charity. Most rich folks like to keep their dough. They don’t strip their bank accounts and investment portfolios. They keep them and then pass them on to their children, their children’s children. And what they do give away is—like the monies my wife and I donate—totally at their own discretion. That’s the rich-guy philosophy in a nutshell: don’t tell us how to use our money; we’ll tell you.
Raising taxes on those who can afford it isn’t enough to put our fiscal house in order. Neither is simply cutting social services and defense until we have no police, fire, teachers, social security, or military. We’re going to have to both cut spending and raise revenues from those who will be least affected by it. To arbitrarily refuse to do one or the other is stupid and dangerous. And kudos to Mr. King for calling out those who won’t consider raising revenues.
