Dinesh D'Souza - America: Imagine a World without Her by Dinesh D'Souza Read Free Book Online Page A

to him, and the three subsequent days he performed compulsory and gratuitous labor on the estate of his lord.” Marx appreciated the clarity of the system: “here the paid and unpaid part of labor were sensibly separated.” 4 So at least the serf could recognize the degree to which he was being ripped off. And the thieves were the lords and aristocrats, who lived off the labor of the serfs. The serfs worked, and they ate.
    America’s tax rates, we may recall with some surprise, impose basically the same terms on successful citizens as those imposed on the medieval serf. The top federal tax rate is nearly 40 percent, and when other taxes are piled on, the top rate easily reaches 50 percent. What that means is that half of the labor of these citizens is confiscated up front; another way to look at it is that the first half of the year they work for the government, and only the second half they work for themselves and their families.
    Obama and many progressives consider these tax rates unfairly low—they would like to raise them. Obama, with Alinskyite caution, never says how much. But progressive scholars are more specific. Former Treasury Secretary Robert Reich proposes a top marginal tax rate of 55 percent. Economist Richard Wolff nostalgically invokes the period immediately following World War II when the top marginal tax rate was over 90 percent. Wolff says that the rich, in payinga mere 40 percent currently, have enjoyed a massive “tax cut.” He’d like to see the rates go back up toward 90 percent. 5 What this means is that successful people would get to keep 10 percent—10 cents of every dollar they earn. What’s remarkable about this is that if you took away that 10 percent, they’d essentially be reduced to slavery. Slavery is a system based on a 100 percent tax rate.
    Now obviously some of this money goes toward providing the necessary and appropriate services of government. These services include defense, the police, the highways, product safety, environmental protection, and basic research. Notice, however, that these are benefits that accrue to all citizens. Everyone benefits from the common defense. The highways are there for everyone to use, even if some choose not to use them. So these activities fall under what the Constitution terms the “general welfare.” Contrast this with government transfer payments from one group of Americans to another. How does this promote the general welfare? Clearly it does not. It constitutes a forcible extortion from one group and an unearned benefit to another.
    I acknowledge that we have moral obligations to our fellow citizens that go beyond equal treatment under the laws. Consider Bill Gates, who has a net worth of around $65 billion. Surely Gates can’t spend the bulk of that money, and since there is such a huge surplus, doesn’t he have an ethical duty to the needy people of America and perhaps also the world? Undoubtedly Gates’s billions can help with what government has been doing: fund schools, build roads, bail out banks, send money to Egypt and Israel, and give more people monthly checks. Yes, Gates has an ethical duty, but I believe that he—not the government—should discharge that duty. First, it’s his money and therefore he, not Obama or the U.S. Congress, should decide how much he wants to give away and who that money should go to. Gates may choose to buy mosquito nets forAfricans or sponsor health research, and this is his prerogative. Second, since Gates earned the money he is much more likely to disburse it wisely. It seems that the Gates Foundation has done more good for society than we could entrust Obama to do with comparable resources.
    Why is it theft for governments to engage in large-scale wealth redistribution? Recall why people come together to form governments in the first place. According to the early modern philosophers, people enter into a hypothetical “social contract.” They leave the state of nature and enter into