Progressive-Democrats, including their Presidential candidates, are fond of saying the Evil Rich aren’t paying their fair share in taxes; they should pay more.  Those same Progressive-Democrats also carefully decline to say what that fair share should be, other than their “more.”

Here’s a graph of what those Evil Rich do pay, compared with the income those same Evil Rich earn, courtesy of the Center of the American Experiment:

Notice that. That’s even after those Evil Rich have taken all the adjustments to their top line income that our tax code allows them to take, including the Progressive-Democrats’ much disliked preferential tax treatment for capital gains and interest income.

The graph shows the rates for the top 50%.  The top 10% pays a skosh over 70% of all income taxes paid Uncle Sugar, while earning only a bit under 48% of the private sector’s income.

Ninety per cent, seventy per cent—in what way are these not the Evil Rich’s fair share, much less more than their fair share?  Especially compared to those bottom 50% who earn a bit over 10% of the private sector’s income, but pay only 3%?

The Progressive-Democrats won’t say. The only conclusion is that they consider the fair share to be “all of it.”

Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and Senator Bernie Sanders (I, VT) is outraged. Outraged, he says.

It is outrageous that the wealthiest corporate executives in America get unlimited, special tax privileges on hundreds of millions of dollars in savings, while ordinary workers can only get tax deferment of up to $19,500 on their 401(k)s[.]

Of course, the (Democratic) Socialist’s answer is to raise taxes on those executives’ savings, their executive retirement and deferred compensation accounts.  He wants to “sharply curb” the tax benefits associated with those accounts. Because, after all, there comes a time when they’ve made enough money. And they didn’t earn that money, anyway; they had help.

Never mind that however earned, it’s certainly not Government’s money; it’s still the earner’s money. Never mind that Government has no business dictating to any of the citizens who employ it how much “enough” is.

Never mind, either, that yeah, they did earn the money. They took the risks—exacerbated by excessive Government regulation—they put in the time and sweat. And the help they had—their employees, not Government—were well paid. Even the low/no skill minimum wage worker was well paid for the value of his work—those, that is, who were able to stay employed or to find work in the first place after Government minimum wage diktats priced them out of low/no skill required jobs.

No, the right answer does not include capping the success of the most successful or increasing the tax bite on those most successful.  Success isn’t capped just on the Evil Rich, though.  The success on all of us is capped: that tax deferment limit doesn’t only apply to our 401(k)s; there are even more draconian caps on our 403(b)s, our Traditional IRAs, our Roth IRAs.  Those caps are not the right answer, either; they’re part of the same error.

Capping success, though, is all this (Democratic) Socialist and his Progressive-Democratic Party confreres know to do.

The right answer, the non-socialist answer, the free market capitalist answer, is to stop capping success.  Leave off the attempts to confiscate the proceeds of executive success and eliminate the caps on the tax deferability of the contributions the rest of us make to our savings and retirement accounts. The money in those accounts and the money we could contribute additionally, were those caps eliminated, also is not Government’s money. It’s ours.

And so is our success.

Full stop.