Liberté, Ègalité, Fraternité!

Small businesses are usually S corporations, not C corporations. Taxes for S corps go to the owner. Therefore, if Joe owns an S corp that makes $250k, he is taxed as making $250. That decreases the amount of money that he has for payroll. If his business takes a small dip, has that much less to pay his employee. He either then dips into his own savings to pay the employee or lays off the employee. That, of course, would raise the unemployment compensation that he has to pay the state with the his remaining money. Unlike the government, Joe takes all the risk. Moreover, 95% of small businesses fail within the first 5 years. Increasing taxes in a good year makes surving a down year less likely.

Second, Joe was just asking questions that many supporting Senator Obama can't answer. Is the $250k on gross or net? As of November 3, Obama supporter Senator Claire Macaskill could not get the numbers right! The $250k applies to couples that own the business. The amount is only $200k for individual business owners.

Third, the authors of our Constitution believed in liberty and equality of rights, not equality of outcome. Looking beyond the slogans, it is impossible to have equality of outcome/wealth and have liberty. The general welfare clause in the constitution was always meant to be constrained by the rights/powers elsewhere in the Constitution. To interpret otherwise is to make the rest of the Constitution useless because it could be trumped be the general welfare clause. If one did take such a liberal approach to the general welfare, it could be interpretted to support slavery as some politician could believe it to be in the general welfare for certain individuals to be enslaved. That would be absurd! Yet, those who want to use the general welfare clause to redistribute wealth totally open the door to such a liberal interpretation.

Faun's appeal to Jesus is even more interesting. Should we appeal to Jesus and pass anti-abortion laws, especially with respect to partial birth abortion? More importantly, Jesus's teachings were always geared toward individual giving and it was never to be under compulsion, versus the Obama/Biden redistribution which is forced and under threat of imprisonment.

Both senators Obama and Biden have talked about spreading the wealth, but it is others people's weatlth. According to their tax records, they have been giving less than 1% of their own money to charity, yet they are among the wealthiest Americans! They want to raise taxes on those who make less then them while they not only make more money and contribute less, but also have many congressional benefits not available to non-government personnel. What hypocracy!

The effectiveness of raising taxes to decrease poverty also has its flaws. According to the GAO, of every $1.00 raised from taxes, only 33 cents goes to the person in need. All charities taken together (including corrupt ones) fare much better as twice as much money goes to the person in need (66 cents).

The Soviet Union certainly also had a forced redistribution of wealth policy. In the end under Gorbachev, the distribution of wealth was almost the same as in the US under Reagan! The political class had significant wealth in property and goods, making them "more equal" than most of their citizens.

Finally, America, both as a government and as a collection of individuals, is the most generous country on this planet! Ironically, those advocating redistribution of wealth do not appear to be among them!

Faun's heart is in the right place, but her position is based more on emotion that historical fact. Although I make less than either Senator or Obama, I donate more and am personally involved helping people who really need it. If you want to redistribute wealth, don't wait for the government to take it from, be personally involved and help those in need now.