It’s near the middle of April (check local listings for the date in your area) and that means one of two things. First, the Chicago Cubs are mathematically eliminated from the postseason. And second, it’s tax day.
Along with December 7th, April 15th is a day that will live in infamy, mainly because the Internal Revenue Service makes the TSA look like gentle lovers as they probe you in ways that make proctologists wince. And Leftists think the rich need to pay more. After all, the rich make more money and have more loopholes, so they’re literally cheating the rest of us by not paying their fair share.
Which brings us to one of my favorite topics. No, not the mathematical elimination of the Chicago Cubs, but the concept of “fair share.” Seems it’s a lot more complicated than the Left makes it sound.
fair share
What the Left thinks it means – making sure everyone pays their portion of the tax burden
What it really means – a meaningless term Leftists throw around to get people to hate the wealthy
Before we get into the “what constitutes fair share” discussion, we have to go through some numbers. In the fiscal year 2023, the IRS collected over $4.7 trillion in tax revenue. To put it mildly, that’s a shit-ton of money. For those who use the metric system, that’s a shit-kilo of money.
As big of a number that is, it’s overshadowed by a smaller number: 97.7%. That’s the percentage of the tax burden paid by the top 50% of taxpayers in 2020. Granted, there’s a significant difference between 2020 and 2023 or 2024 for that matter, but the numbers haven’t changed very much since 2020.
The Tax Foundation did a breakdown of the 2021 numbers, which are the most recent we have to work with. And that’s where we find the 97.7% of the tax burden I referenced above. If current trends match the 2021 numbers (and I have no reason to believe they wouldn’t given the glacial pace at which the federal government adopts change), that means the top 1% paid over $12 trillion in federal income taxes.
Now, let’s look at the other side of the equation. The bottom 50% chipped in a little over $108 billion. I think we could scrape that together from the change in our couches, right?
Seriously, though, the Left doesn’t see anything wrong with this, except for the part where the rich are only paying a paltry $14 trillion. To hear Leftists talk, the rich are using the tax code to their advantage to get out of paying what they owe.
In other words, they’re doing what most taxpayers do. Even Leftists who tell us paying higher taxes is our patriotic duty. But fortunately we would never let such a mouth-drooling idiot to become President, right?
The problem with the Left’s approach is it doesn’t exactly have a foundation in facts. The numbers give us a vastly different story: there are a shit-ton (or shit-kilo) of people who are riding on the tailored coattails of the wealthy. And guess who the Left convinces the rich aren’t paying enough taxes?
If you need a hint, check out Bill Gates’ coattails.
Of course, people like Gates, Warren Buffett, and (surprise surprise) Leftist politicians like Elizabeth “Chief Running Mouth” Warren are all on record saying the rich need to pay more. And why? Because they make more! Once the rich pony up a few trillion more, then maybe…and I do mean maybe, things will be more fair.
Actually, it will never be fair enough for Leftists. Every time a group negotiates with Leftists and comes closer to their side, the Left moves the goalposts a little bit further out, requiring the group to do more to come closer to the new goal. But it’s never at the expense of the Left, mind you. If you want compromise, it has to be on their terms and their terms alone.
Which means this whole “fair share” bullshit is dishonest at its face. I was as shocked at you were to find out Leftists are liars.
What the Left really means when they demand the rich pay their fair share is for the rich to pay more. Once the top 1% is taxed to infinity and beyond, then the focus will shift to the top 2%. Then the top 3% and so on. And at every step, Leftists are counting on gullible poorer people and useful rich idiots to justify their actions. Of course, anyone with a lick of sense (which means Leftists won’t get it) sees this eventually getting to a point where anyone with $1 above the average is seen as the rich and has to be taken down a peg or two. Or fifty.
Then where will the money come from exactly? That’s right, kids, it will have to come from the people who were cheering this shit on from the jump. And since they don’t have as much to start with, it’s going to be damn tough to get any more blood out of that turnip.
And here’s the funny part. And by funny I mean grotesque and sad…which isn’t all that funny, but work with me here. If the Left gets what it wants and taxes the rich more, it’s not even going to solve the major issue that it’s allegedly supposed to fix: the national debt. In fact, it’s not going to do anything but give Leftists more money to spend on stupid shit we don’t need and only a handful of people demanded in the first place. There’s a reason some Congresscritters come out every year with examples of wasteful government spending.
One such Congresscritter is Senator Rand Paul. I don’t always agree with him on policy matters, but he has been consistent in his commitment to reducing government waste whenever possible. His 2023 “Festivus Report” showcased some pretty absurd expenditures, like paying dead people. Although I have to admit I’m down with the funding of “Monkey Island” because, well, monkeys are awesome!
That being said, raising taxes makes it easier for people who don’t care about how the money gets spent to spend the money it gets. If it were being spent on infrastructure (which Leftists have said is just about everything except Donald Trump), that would be one thing, but the very fact we paid for Monkey Island tells me it’s not.
But there are ideas floating around that truly are closer to fair than the current shitstorm…I mean system. Two such ideas are the flat tax and the national sales tax. With the former, everybody pays the same percentage with fewer deductions. The latter only taxes items and services purchased. In both scenarios, the rich are paying more by virtue of what they take in or spend depending on the system. And both of them make more sense than what we have now.
Which is why Leftists hate them.
One of the great many paradoxes the Left operates under is how conservative they are when the system works for them. The minute something changes their status quo to the point it jeopardizes it, the Left goes into complete lockdown, can’t change a damn thing or it will be utter chaos with dogs and cats shacking up together mode. When the system doesn’t work for them, they are the most liberal (dictionary definition, not ideological) people out there. Then, they go into complete open up the flood gates, change every damn thing or it will be utter chaos with dogs and cats shacking up together mode.
And right now, they’re not happy with the rich being able to keep more of what they generate by…following the tax code. I could go into all the problems with the tax codes, but then this piece would be longer than the tax code itself and I don’t want to bore you any more than I already do. If Leftists were truly serious about making sure the rich pay more, they would look at the tax code and try to close up some of the legal loopholes.
But that would mean some of them might be subject to the same “tax the rich” arguments they’ve been making for decades. We can’t have that, can we? So, instead, we have to put up with more “the rich need to pay their fair share” talk for the foreseeable future.
But remember these are the assholes who think a flat tax or a national sales tax wouldn’t work to make things fair when they’re arguably the very definition of fairness. Why, it’s almost as if Leftists want the tax system to remain unfair while proclaiming they want it to be fair!
Good thing we aren’t electing total dumbasses who play this stupid game, right?
