We tax wealth, even the wealth of persons of modest means, but why?

This is a two part article on patriotism and wealth.  The article is inspired by the events of the last ten years in which our Congress did not raise taxes to pay for two foreign wars.  During that period, it also extended the tax cuts obtained early in the G.W. Bush Administration which were made possible as a result of the balanced budgets of the Clinton Years in the White House.  The tax cuts of course should have renewed the economic good times of the 1990s age of the new technology companies and mildly increase revenue of taxation.  Instead, the inequities in the tax code went unreformed and Wall Street took ordinary Americans to the cleaners.  Even worse the bankers and lenders leveraged their risks into oblivion to take profits by sale of securities which may as well have been shredded when the housing market collapsed.  All of this irresponsible behavior was to really bad effect as President Bush was left scrambling in 2008 at the end of his term to save the world economy with bailouts of banks and Wall Street investors (which to be fair included the investments of ordinary Americans whose portfolios for retirement took it in the shorts and just maybe should be spared a total emptying out of their pockets).  Enjoy.

Part I.  Why I love the rich.

Do you know why you love the rich? I know why I love the rich. They pay the graduated income tax in support of capitalism that permitted them to be takers of the wealth of others, the laborers, the decedents (inheritance), and the means of wealth afforded by public spending on roads, airports, and the infrastructure of the country, including the internet, not to mention the security afforded by military preparedness and national defense.

I dearly love a certain nephew who confuses liberals with communists and socialists and at times spews forth that liberals are fascists or nazi. He debases language and misconstrues the nature of those of us who support a system of laws and self-government that procures prosperity for ourselves and our posterity.

The wealthy, left indulging in a myopic avarice and fear, at their worst and ultimately against their own self interest, would attack and degrade the purity of the graduated income tax which permits not only the system of laws to prevail, but also refloats the economy so that it can grow again and provide pathways for all participants regardless of social economic class.

The very best capitalists support the graduated income tax and gladly fund government because it is the true expense of procuring and maintaining wealth (i.e. property rights and intellectual property rights being the procurement by order in society without which chaos and debasement ensues).  

Our most generous and truly disinterested capitalists even safeguard their children from the evil effects of unearned wealth by posting their wealth to charitable endowments that further the public good while focusing on the empowerment of their children to have goals and interests, their own pursuits.  That would explain the exorbitant tuition the wealthy afford for the better if not the best schools from pre-school to grad school.  Not containing the tuition rates perhaps due to their extreme of wealth, they then at some point fail to object to our current system of encumbering our college students with burdensome student loans to afford post-secondary education and even more burdensome grad school debt.  At no junction is the class system so apparent and so damning as two students with the exact same results as undergrad but burdened so unevenly with debt.  The impoverished graduated heads into the job market extremely hungry to say the least, and at just about every turn, has to broker a future for oneself and likely broken in addition spiritually as one sells his soul to have his success.  As an aside, it suggests that ethical and spiritual endowments are life saving expenditures for our young which at some point will surely factor large in a child or a youth or a student making it through the worm hole that is economic independence with a conscience, a regard for society, the family, children the vulnerable, the elders, and the finer things of life such as art, music, preservation and restoration of nature and wildlife.

Even Dale Carnegie who extracted the very life blood of immigrant labor to the point of slavery knew that he could not cross the bloody ground upon which his wealth crested without practicing disinterested public endowment and largesse for the good of society.  

God bless you if you have a good income or God bless you if you pay as you go, but pay your church tithe and your income tax with a grateful heart.

What is true?

When you begin to realize that the words conservative and liberal coalesce if the public interest is held high.

We tax ourselves because we trust in our selves to not be isolated and ensconced in our walled and armed compounds with the starving at our gate awaiting alms.

We fully fund public education for all and esteem the teacher who provides learning and discipline as a way forward (whether the child is of the entitlement of wealth or of welfare) (notice that the word "entitlement" while dishonored by crass materialists actually is a regard for the livelihood of persons whose wealth is not yet procurable, or likely procurable, or past being procurable by engaging in the fray that is the competitive market place of society, business, and industry).

When you say "God bless America" if you're a liberal like me, you really mean that you do bless those who cherish its system of laws and its self-government, its fairness, its equity, and its prosperity.  These together as integral of one another are together your highest concern.  You could actually say of me that I am bent on the conservation of values and livelihoods for all in so far as that can be obtained on this earth and by our society bent on progress and the dignity of human life.  I would see to it that government is to be the servant of we the people, and not of the privileged few whose greed (and its excuse for the perpetuation of private gain) endangers the economic well being of the rest of society.   In my book the community and its prosperity procures for all the very best products of both capitalism (private ownership) and socialism (public ownership), but that is a topic for another day as the balance of public and private ownership requires patient fine tuning and conscientious experiment.  Not governing ourselves wisely is to buy trouble and so liberals and conservatives stay engaged and as true patriots get the job done!