When you consider the state of the American left today, the people they put forth as the leaders of the "progressive" movement and all the woke horse squeeze that goes with it, it tells you a lot. Consider that today's Democratic Party has as one of their primary standard-bearers a daffy old Bolshevik from Vermont, a guy who sits in the United States Senate while looking like a flood victim, a guy who has never done an honest day's work in his life - a guy who honeymooned in the Soviet Union, for crying out loud. And he's not even a Democrat, instead being an independent who caucuses with Democrats.
I am writing, of course, of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who has never met a tax increase he wasn't in favor of. To that end, he loves to launch into wild-eyed rants about the supposed tax rates paid by billionaires - he used to rant about millionaires before becoming one himself. There's just one problem with his assertions re: billionaires' tax rates:
They are utter horse squeeze. Here's why, and I'm going to tell you.
First, on those tax rates, an editorial at Issues & Insights has the data:
He says that Warren Buffett’s tax rate is 0.1%, “while the average schoolteacher paid 9.8%.”
Elon Musk, he says, faced a tax rate of 3.3%. Jeff Bezos’ is less than 1%. Michael Bloomberg’s is 1.3%, while “the average registered nurse paid 13.3%.”
If that seems too outrageous to be true, that’s because it is.
Those numbers are based on an analysis by the leftist ProPublica, which compared the taxes paid by these billionaires with their wealth, not their income.
But as anyone who pays taxes knows, the government taxes income, not some fanciful measure of wealth.
That's a problem. Not only do we tax income, not wealth, but the Constitution, at the moment, won't even allow us to tax wealth; that's something that most of the left seems blissfully unaware of.
First: The Constitution, in Article I, Section 8, states:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
There would seem to be some ambiguity there; note that this states Congress has the power to "lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises," while stating later that "...duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States." But next, read down to Article I, Section 9, Clause 4:
No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.
That's why we needed the 16th Amendment to implement an income tax, which is not collected in proportion to the Census, while being a direct tax on the citizens.
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
So, Senator Sanders, I'm sorry, you can emit gaseous substances on this all you like, but without a constitutional amendment, you can't tax wealth. You can't. And you aren't going to get that amendment. First, it's a stupid idea; second, in our hotly divisive political environment today, no constitutional amendment is happening. Not for any reason.
Read More: ‘Old Man Yells at Claude’: Sanders Uses Chatbot to Warn About Chatbots
Are Dems Benefiting From the TSA Shutdown? Don't Ask Bernie Sanders
Senator Sanders surely knows this. He's pandering; he is shoveling the same stuff I used to shovel while working in the pens in my uncle's livestock auction barn when I was a kid. Bernie knows, or at least his handlers know, that if you repeat a lie long enough and often enough, you'll get some low-information people to believe it.
Now, let's look at the facts that the I&I editorial laid out:
That same ProPublica report shows that from 2014 to 2018, Buffett paid $23.7 million in taxes, against an income of $125 million. That’s a tax rate of 19%.
Jeff Bezos paid $973 million in taxes on income of $4.22 billion. That’s a 23% tax rate.
Musk’s tax rate was even higher – 30% – since he paid $455 million on income of $1.52 billion.
So how did ProPublica manage to force their “true tax rates” down to near zero? Simple, they estimated how much their wealth had increased over those same years using estimates compiled by Forbes of the value of their stock, property, and other holdings, then said that, because those “gains” weren’t taxed, their “true” rates are super low.
In other words: They lied. They knowingly fudged the data to make a patently untrue claim. That's a lie by any measure.
This is how the left works, folks. There is no lie so transparent, no claim so ridiculous, that their base won't believe it - and the "leaders" of the left, the people behind the mid-wit politicians and grifters who are the public faces of the left, know that. They are counting on it. And we, on the saner right, had better be prepared to counter it, every day, in any setting, anywhere and anywhen.
