My latest photoshop effort; click for a larger version:
Redistributionist
It really doesn’t get any clearer than this, although a close look at Obama’s tax policy makes it almost as obvious. He doesn’t want to penalize your success! He just wants to take a big chunk of it and give it away to people he likes better.
Click through for video of Obama patiently explaining to a plumber why the government shall seize the fruits of his labor. Tax Freedom Day was April 23rd this year. That’s right. From January 1 to April 23, you worked for the government instead of yourself. That is, if you paid taxes at all – one third of the nation pays no taxes whatsoever.
How much is finally going to be enough?
Here’s the truth about poverty in this country. What I learned while on welfare is that there is a constant subset of people who do not want to work; they do not want to do what it takes to fight their own way up the ladder. They expect it to be given to them. They have been taught to hope for an outcome, not an opportunity. And that makes all the difference.
Teach a man to fish, and he’ll feed himself for a lifetime. Show him how to take your fish, and you’ll feed him for a lifetime.
I have one problem when graphs and percentages are used to make a point.
They often oversimply the reality.
In fact we should expect those graphs to show that the top N% pay a larger portion of taxes because they make more. The only way to adequate make a comparison like done here is to make a percentage of a percentage. In other words, I’d like to see a graph showing the percentage of personal income paid in taxes rather than the percentage of the total amount of taxes paid.
Put even simpler, if 10 paid made $10,000 a year and a eleventh person made $200,000 we should expect that the 11th person pay a larger amount in taxes making a larger percentage of the total taxes paid.
To be fair, I do agree that many people are lazy for whatever reason. On the flip side, as we see many people are greedy. On both sides, people are selfish.
Here’s a question for discussion (I realize I’m being extreme here to make a point): I realize that we cannot claim that US is a completely Christian society; however, shouldn’t we as christian support helping everyone suceed similar to the events in Acts 2 where everyone was expected to sell what they had so that no one lacked anything?
Also, isn’t the whole idea behind tithes is that those who have more give a larger amount but the same percentage? You can expect people in poverty to pay an equal amount of taxes when compared to the wealthy.
There are 300+ million people in America
The average american makes aroun $40,000 a year
US GDP (what we all make together) is $37,500,000,000,000+
37+ million of americans lived in poverty in 2007.
The richest 10% of americans possesses 69.8% of the wealth (compare this percentage to graph and it suddenly doesn’t look so alarming)
Top top 1% possesses 33.4% of the wealth. (ditto)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States] There’s a really interesting section called Income and human development
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States]
Immanuel, it’s true that people who make more pay more, but I’m trying to make several points – a) quite a lot of the country pays nothing at all; b) it’s not just a matter of paying a large amount. People who make more money pay a larger percentage of their income. As you mentioned, the tithe requires everyone to pay the same percentage, which is fair. With Obama’s plan, not only will about a third of the country continue to pay nothing at all, they will receive a check back – money which was forcibly taken from others, and given to them.
In Acts 2, everyone wasn’t “expected” to do those things; they did them voluntarily. What happened to Ananias and Saphira eloquently illustrates that the reason WHY we give is the key, not THAT we give.
As to Christians supporting “helping everyone succeed,” I absolutely support Christians giving sacrificially. My family, for example, lives very modestly, and although we make a good deal less than both the Bidens and the Palins, we give a great deal more than both of them put together. But Christians choosing to give sacrificially for the glory of God is an entirely different matter than government taking money at the point of a gun (tax protesters are literally arrested and jailed) and the outcome for both of those scenarios is very different. Christians giving sacrificially for the love of God glorify God and are used to expand His kingdom. Money extorted from taxpayers is used to glorify government (now the giver of all good things) and to expand government. (Read this post – Social Justice, For The Glory Of Government.)
I agree… even Christ and most of the New Testament was devoted to not legislating the love for God and each other. Obviously, none of us want to pay taxes. However, Christ was never agains taxes, per se. We as a whole do get a return by paying taxes even though the system isn’t perfect; so, taxes have to exist.
However, now we are asking the real questions.
-Should we pay taxes or as much as we do as a whole?
-Is it really true that that the rich pay more than their fair share of taxes (Your graphs do NOT adequately proove this, although it does suggest it; IMHO I think that the 69% of the wealth which the top 10% earned should contribute to at least 69% of the taxes not less. )?
-Should everyone have to pay taxes? (e.g. those who don’t make enough to live on what they have earned, the elderly who have to take minimum wage because they can’t get other jobs)
-Since 1/3 of the people are not giving their share of taxes, doesn’t that mean someone has to give over 100% of their share to make up for it?
-If the rich aren’t giving their full 100% of taxes doesn’t that mean that the middle class are?
-(I assume that most people reading this aren’t in the top 10% of wage earners) Are we supporting the machine that has routinely given more breaks to the rich? (I have read books about how tax laws have been made for centuries that have continuously benefited the rich and how our economy is not even taught to the poor and middle class)
-Should we really resolve to the if we can’t beat them join them mentality even if it is not fair?