Interesting note--which you don't read in the MSM.
...Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute made a very interesting point about “income inequality.” He notes that the ostensibly shocking Congressional Budget Office report that concluded “The share of income received by the top 1% grew from about 8% in 1979 to over 17% in 2007” has been presented in a profoundly disingenuous manner, because if the report hadn’t abruptly terminated in 2007, it would have noticed “the share of after-tax income of the top 1%” had dropped right back to 11.3% by 2009. “The larger truth,” Reynolds notes, “is that recessions always destroy wealth and small business incomes at the top.” --quotes from WSJ
No, that's not all.
....a great deal of the increased income reported by the “One Percent” was exactly that: an increase in reported income. They responded to lower tax rates by shifting more of their income into taxable categories. “In short, what the Congressional Budget Office presents as increased inequality from 2003 to 2007 was actually evidence that the top 1% of earners report more taxable income when tax rates are reduced on dividends, capital gains and businesses filing under the individual tax code,”...
Oh. S'pose that the raging editorialists will now apologize?
There's a larger, and far more significant point here, which John Hayward illuminates.
...“inequality” is the eternal wellspring of collectivist power. It is the dragon that can never be slain, the Grail that can never be seized. It will always dance just out of reach… and there will always be socialists leaning over our shoulders and whispering that we must hand over more control of our lives, so they can get us just a little bit closer. They’ll never tell us exactly what “fairness” would be, because then we would know if we had achieved it. Blindness is an important tool of control.
This applies to the "Warming" crowd--ask them to specify the "ideal" temperature, for example. Or the definition of "clean" water. And that crowd is now using "Environmental Justice" as the new mantra--precisely because such "justice" cannot be defined. Mutatis mutandis, it's what's behind the "I'm OFFENDED!!" Annie Gaylor bunch who would demolish all signs of Christianity.
Hayward makes one observation that is not quite true:
The only place in which everyone is totally “equal” is a prison, and that’s assuming you’re willing to forget about the guards.
--in fact, (according to the Hebrew proverb)--if you want to see equality, look in the graveyard.
Meantime, rhetoric with no definitions is a wonderful tool, for Statists.
And look how many people buy into it....without any kind of critical thought, no sense of history. "Fairness", "equality", "ideal" are defined by the "elite"; by those who are not equal or fair. No one seems all that concerned that those who make those words their battle cries are becoming more and more wealthy. They become "more equal than others". There seems to be no concern that it is large, powerful governments that destroy God-given Rights. It is not small, free-market government that kills tens-of-millions of their own people. It is the culmination of Big Government - a totalitarian state.
ReplyDeleteWhy many cannot see any of this is beyond me. We are taking the bullet train to that which has failed miserably every time it has been tried.