Of course, tax the rich, but tax everyone else, too. The latest get (the) rich quick scheme, this one offered by Alan Davis, The Leonard and Sophie Davis Fund President and ex-founder and CEO of Conservatree Paper Company, though, falls into the same trap that all the other Progressive-Democrat schemes—Senator Elizabeth Warren’s (D, MA) wealth tax, Senator Bernie Sanders’ (I, VT) estate tax expansion, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ (D, NY) 70% marginal tax—do. What Davis is proposing is
a 10% surtax on the earnings (including both income and capital gains) of the top 0.1% of taxpayers
That’s the sucker trap. Not singling out the rich for extra taxing, but maintaining the special treatment of capital gains, other than within his surtax.
Why should capital gains—or debt interest or any other form of income, or expense—get special treatment? That’s just the social engineering distortion of our tax code that’s so badly counterproductive for our economy.
In 2007, the last year before the Panic of 2008, from which we’ve only begun a serious recovery over the last couple of years, we Americans earned $17.8 trillion dollars from all sources: wages and salaries, interest payments, dividends and capital gains, gambling earnings, pass-throughs from small businesses, and so on, and we paid, in aggregate, $1.15 trillion dollars in taxes on that income.
Of those taxes, the top 10% of us paid 70% while the bottom 50% of us paid little to nothing.
Take the social engineering out of our tax code. Charge a flat 10% tax on all income regardless of source, and charge it to all who have income. Americans will spend their money where they deem fit, not where Government dictates, and businesses will allocate their money according to sound business decision, not according to Government “desires.”
That will suitably tax the rich, as well as all of us.
Set our economy free.