Class Warfare: The Mortal Enemy Of Economic Growth And Jobs

Forbes ^ | 10/18/2012 | Jim Powell

[SeekAndFind]

Our economy is lousy, the labor force participation rate is the lowest in 31 years, we’ve had 43 consecutive months with unemployment over 8 percent, and a record 47 million people are on food stamps, so one might expect President Obama would welcome as much help as he could get. Surely he would want private sector job creators – investors and entrepreneurs – to have the strongest possible incentives for turning around this Obama “recovery” where household incomes are falling faster than they fell in the Bush recession.

But Obama’s priority is class warfare. That’s why he relentlessly denounces job creators as “millionaires and billionaires.” That’s why he demands that they be punished with higher tax rates.

Recently New York Senator Charles Schumer, one of Obama’s comrades, vowed that there would be no bipartisan budget deal without higher taxes on the rich.

What is it that drives class warriors? “Fairness,” of course, is the familiar battle cry, but according to the IRS the top 1 percent of taxpayers pay about 36 percent of federal income taxes. Before the financial meltdown when the rich were richer, the top 1 percent paid over 40 percent. By any standard, that’s a lot – especially considering that as we have heard, 47 percent of taxpayers don’t pay any income tax.

We need to understand that class warfare is a mortal enemy of economic growth and jobs. At the very least, class warfare means “progressive” taxation — higher tax rates on investors and entrepreneurs, eventually reaching confiscatory levels. In many places, class warfare has gone much farther with suffocating regulations, exchange controls, asset seizures, arbitrary imprisonment and other measures that suppress private property rights and throttle a market economy.

[SeekAndFind]

Confiscatory tax rates cannot be justified as revenue-generators, because they don’t raise much money. They discourage work, they drive away investors and entrepreneurs to lower-tax jurisdictions, and there aren’t enough rich people to keep the government going very long, even if all their assets were expropriated. If assets were expropriated this year, that would be a one-time event, and next year government would have no choice but to plunder the middle class and the poor.

[Arm_Bears]

It appears that Forbes is trying to slink back to the Right, or at least to the Middle, after its Left-leaning dalliances.

I’m still not renewing my subscription.

[econjack]

But Obama’s priority is class warfare. That’s why he relentlessly denounces job creators as “millionaires and billionaires.” That’s why he demands that they be punished with higher tax rates.

At first, I thought the man is an economic illiterate but then I read Sol Alinsky's Rules for Radicals that a liberal friend of mine gave me. He is following that book almost chapter and verse. He is out to destroy this system. Either that, or he's a Harvard idiot.

I also can't figure out how libs can be so stupid as to want a lower unemployment rate, but want to punish the very people who create jobs. In 45 years of working, I never once had a poor person give me a job. Can't those stupid people see that a rising tide lifts all boats? Idiots...all of them.

[Don Corleone]

But Obama’s priority is class warfare.

Face it. Obama is what he is. He was born into Marxism, trained in Marxism and fed on Marxisms all his life. Along with Chicago Style (Marxist based) politics he knows nothing else and would believe nothing else even if it was made abundantly evident to him.Class warfare is a principal tenet of Marx and of Obama.

[griswold3]

You cannot be pro-jobs and anti-business at the same time. You cannot love employment and hate employers. Paul Tsongas - Democratic National Convention (1992)
Tsongas was’t a ‘Progressive’...

[Patron92]

Ever since the Bush tax cuts of 2003 Democrats have had a bone in their throat called “tax cuts for the rich”. They have croaked about this for the past 9 years. So, why didn’t the congress end these tax cuts for the rich in 2009/2010 when they had absolute majorities thereby separating these cuts from cuts for every one else? They could have ended these cuts with a one sentence bill! The Democrats wanted to keep “tax cuts for the rich” as a class warfare issue. They really want all of the Bush tax cuts to expire so they can blame Republicans for not giving in on “tax cuts for the rich”.