So, Bill Gates Is a Communist, Then

[from 10/13/10]

Lets talk about I-1098, so we can sound communist to people who’ve forgotten what communism is!

I-1098 would institute a state income tax on “rich” people, namely those with incomes $200,000 or more if individuals, $400,000 or more if married filing jointly. In return, it’ll crank down statewide property taxes and Business and Occupation taxes. That’s really generous, since the “rich” people have most of the taxed properties anyway. It’s a little give and take.

Susan Hutchison, who wishes she were King County Executive, said, while making a sad “please don’t make us be communist” frowny-frown face, “I don’t know a soul who makes $200,000 who considers themselves rich.” Ha! They’re all soul-less!

Ms. Hutchison misses a key point. It’s not important whether her friends consider themselves rich, or not rich enough. What matters is what other people, those people who DON’T live on 6-8 times the state’s median income, think.

The best part of the initiative is that 70% of the income tax has to go toward education, and the rest toward health. This is very important.

They could have written the law so that 70% went to buy crackers and brie for Susan Hutchison’s friends. Or they could have written it so 95% of the money collected would be burned, and the other 5% used to buy the lighter fluid, wieners and marshmallows. Those would be interesting choices. But instead it’s to fund education and health.

“Why is that important, Wes?” “Why don’t poor people work hard to buy their own educations and healths and leave rich people alone?” “Gasp! Isn’t that communist?” These are the sort of deep questions that make me proud to be an American in these times of deepness.

For one thing rich people don’t get rich by trading each others money back and forth. They get money by paying people to work for them and keeping a share of the profits, or by loaning their money out at interest and keeping the interest, or renting property out, or by selling goods to people. All these methods require solvent less-than-rich people to feed the machine of wealth! That’s not communism! That’s how capitalism works and I JUST LOVE IT!

Educations and healths cost too much now, so there’s getting to be a shortage of solvent less-than-rich people! Pretty soon there won’t be any solvent less-than-rich people, there will only be the non-solvent kind, otherwise known as poor people. When there are only poor people, rich people can only get so rich and no richer. The machine of wealth starves! Boo.

Housing costs too much now, too, but we’re capping the property taxes lower, OK?

So here’s the deal: in return for a tiny bite of income taxes at the high end (not near what the feds take) rich people get more educated and more healthy solvent less-than-rich people to employ, loan money to, rent and sell to. The result will be richer rich people!

If you don’t think I’m right about that, ask yourself why both Bill Gates, Sr. and Bill Gates, Jr. are for this initiative. (Hint: they know how to get really rich!)

Further questions to tax the credulous

1. In 1960 just the rate of federal taxes alone for a married couple on the equivalent of today’s $400,000 (around $54,000) would have been more than 50%. The combined effect of today’s federal tax and I-1098 will bring that rate to only 38%. Remember the Seattle World’s Fair? Good times, huh? Too bad we were a communist country back then, paying for all those good times on the backs of the rich.

2. Consider a central planned economy where all the industry is owned by the state, and a system of “taxation”, where the industry is relatively free of state controls, but profits are taxed. Find at least one difference between them. Lose the difference. Find it again. Lose it, find it, lose it, find it. Until you can’t lose it any more. Please.