At the rate President Barack Obama's policies are destroying wealth, the pool of millionaire taxpayers may be too shallow to provide the windfall the redistributors hope for.Liberals never get it. They want the golden eggs and insist on cutting open the magic goose to get them. Alas, once you destroy the engine of prosperity, prosperity disappears. Heavy taxation on entrepreneurs is like strapping a boulder onto the backs of runners and expecting them to run at the same speed. As Finley puts it:
Plunging stock markets over the past two weeks have ravaged portfolios and caused lots of people to slip a few rungs down the economic ladder. Last Monday alone, investors lost $1.2 trillion. Imagine.
But that's the problem with so-called millionaire's taxes. They only work if the rich stay rich, and high tax and spend policies that slow growth, rock financial markets and take the reward out of risk-taking produce a lot of ex-millionaires.And when those millionaires become ex-millionaires, they shut down marginal businesses and lay off workers. You can't make payroll with cute bumper-sticker slogans. It takes moola.
These facts will never deter the wealth-confiscators, however. They never learn. They will continue, forever, looking for the financial equivalent of perpetual motion, or the ancient chemist's quest to turn lead into gold. It doesn't work, kids. When you destroy human incentive, people stop working, investing and taking risks. The productive dwindle and the welfare rolls grow. Soon, the house of cards collapses when there is nothing left to "redistribute."
Read all of Nolan Finley's article here.
