Peter Ferrara has an excellent analysis of Obama’s tax plan here. He observes that what Obama proposes is a welfare plan that increases taxes on wealthier people and pays money out to poorer people. If federal tax revenues go up, it won’t be enough to pay for the increased spending Obama proposes.
Obama is playing two cards at once — the envy card and the ignorance card.
He calculates that he’ll win votes by saying that it’s more “fair” for wealthy people to pay more in taxes (the envy card) and that he won’t lose many from people who are economically savvy enough to understand that having the government gobble up more of the nation’s resources is a recipe for long-run stagnation (the ignorance card).
It’s a leftist article of faith that it benefits the poor for the government to take money away from wealthy people, preventing them from spending or investing it as they think best, and have politicians spend it instead. That belief is just plain mistaken.
