Common Sense Government Blog

The History of Political Correctness

Fairness

By John Eberhard

Liberals in America, and President Obama in particular, have made a lot of noise in recent years about "fairness," or "social justice." Obama's message is that some people have too much money, and way back in 2008 on the campaign trail, he told Joe the Plumber that everyone benefits when we spread the wealth around.

Since then he has demonized the wealthy, and stated repeatedly that they are not paying their "fair share" in terms of taxes.

Let's take a look at some of these basic, fundamental assumptions. This idea is that a system that allows some people to make lots of money while others have far less, is fundamentally unfair. So to address this, Obama and other liberals seek to implement redistribution of wealth, heavily taxing the wealthy and giving that money to those with less money.

Just in case anyone does not know, redistribution of wealth is an idea that originated with Karl Marx in "The Communist Manifesto." I recommend reading it if you have not. Many liberals today scoff at and try to misdirect us from this fact, but it is true that redistribution of wealth is a socialist/communist idea, that has been gaining more and more traction in the United States for the last 80 years.

Redistribution of wealth is already in existence in America in many different forms, from progressive taxation (where those with higher incomes pay higher percentages of taxes), to welfare, to food stamps.

But let's take a look at another issue related to this that I have never seen discussed anywhere else. Let's examine the issue of "fairness." What is fairness really?

Liberals believe that fairness exists when you take money from the wealthy and give it to the poor, so that the amount of money everyone has tends to even out. This is the egalitarian model or concept. Everyone is supposed to have the same or similar amounts, or "equal outcomes." This supposedly eliminates the "unfair" situation of some having more money than others.

But who is that concept of "fairness" fair to? What group does it emphasize? What group does it put all of our attention on? And what group are the liberals mainly thinking about in their equations?

The poor of course. All of liberals' concentration is on the poor. They put all of their attention onto the least productive members of society. All of their systems and policies and regulations are built around helping the least productive members of society and flowing more money to them.

What about the most productive members of society, entrepreneurs and business owners? They are routinely demonized, and taxed at higher and higher levels. Is this system fair to them? Not only is the redistribution model not fair to the most productive members of society, it doesn't ever even worry about what's fair to them. It does its best to penalize them.

There are certain individuals who make society function. Not only are these people not being rewarded for their efforts, they are being stamped upon.

The top 1% in terms of taxable income paid 37% of all taxes in American in 2009. The top 10% in terms of taxable income paid 70% of all taxes. See here. Yet Obama says they are not paying their fair share and need to pay more.

By viewing the graph on this page, you can see that the percentage of overall taxes paid by the top 1% has been rising since 1980, from 19.05% in 1980 to 38.02% in 2008. That’s nearly doubling in 28 years, for the math challenged.

And the percentage of overall taxes paid by the bottom 50% has fallen during that time, from 7.05% in 1980 to 2.7% in 2008. And 49% of all US households paid no taxes at all in 2008.

Beyond that, we could look at the idea of incentives. There is an old saying that if you want to get rid of something - tax it. And if you want to get more of something - subsidize it. So as far as incentives go, we are encouraging people to produce less, by heavily taxing those who produce and giving handouts to those who don't work.

And beyond that, what liberals are creating is a large dependent class, people who are losing the ability to fend for themselves and who without that government handout, would fall flat. Is that "fair" to those people? Is it "fair" to the poor to make them dependent on the government?

I will take it out of the realm of a rhetorical question by answering it. NO! It is not fair. It is not fair to the poor to make them more dependent. It is not fair to the country to create a huge dependent class. It is certainly not fair to those who actually create all the wealth and jobs and prosperity in this country to demonize and tax them to death.

Demonizing those who own businesses and create wealth is another major point directly out of the "Communist Manifesto" (written by a man who barely worked a day in his life). Today we call it "class warfare" and Obama is one of its biggest proponents.

What is Fair?

True fairness is for people to be able to keep the fruits of their labors. True fairness is for people to have a chance to provide for themselves and be truly independent. True fairness is allowing those who are ambitious to work harder than others and make more money, and to be able to keep the lion's share of that money. And true fairness is where everyone would pay taxes for the government services that they receive, at the same percentage of their income.