by Jeremy Meister –
Marx’s idea has often been called a “classless society,” but this characterization constitutes one of the biggest myths in modern history. What Marx wanted was a return to the “natural order” — a medieval society where there is a ruling upper class that owns all the property and makes all the decisions while the lower peasant class does all the menial labor. …
Obama’s out there waving around one of the richest men in the world (Warren Buffet) in his attempt to sell average Americans on his “millionaire’s tax.” So now all intellectual talking heads are discussing the goodness and virtue of making those who make seven figures pay more.
But the real focus should be how it is going to affect those at the bottom. Obama and his surrogates have been floating the idea of 250K or 200K as the possible cutoff. Now, it should be pointed out that there is nothing stopping them from making the cutoff as low as 150K or 100K — we’re still in the idea phase, after all.
Let’s assume that the threshold is 200K and that, at that point, the government takes 50%. Up to this point, the government takes 35%. This would mean that someone who makes 200K is actually bringing home 100K. And someone making 199K is bringing home 129,350K a year. In other words, someone would have to make 260K a year to bring home the same amount as someone making 199K. This would create a bubble in the system where individuals would be doing more work for less pay.
The bottom line is that the middle class will be hurt by this tax scheme more than any other group will. The lower class won’t be hammered by these rates. The upper class has armies of accountants to protect their assets. (This is one of the aggravating things about Warren Buffet, Steve King, and Doug Edwards — if they really wanted to pay more in taxes, they could fire their accountants and fill their taxes out themselves.)
And this is how Marx wanted it.
Karl Marx codified a collective society. He dubbed it “Communism.” Socialism would be a transition phase, where the government slowly takes property from the private sector “for the common good.”
Marx’s idea has often been called a “classless society,” but this characterization constitutes one of the biggest myths in modern history. What Marx wanted was a return to the “natural order” — a medieval society where there is a ruling upper class that owns all the property and makes all the decisions while the lower peasant class does all the menial labor.
Guess which class Buffet, Obama, King, and Edwards are going to be in and which class the rest of us will be pushed into.
This is why you’ll never meet a follower of Communism. It’s a movement comprising only leaders. It’s also why some of Communism’s biggest champions are wealthy and upper-class — they don’t stand to lose anything. This is also why libs who walk around complaining about the “plutocracy” of our system — of a tiny handful of millionaires making the decisions in smoky backrooms — see no irony if that group is pushing a Marxist utopia.
The problem is the middle class. There is no place in the neo-medieval society for such people — so enter the “progressive” tax code. Obama’s new tax ideas will do little change the taxes of his supporters at the top or the bottom. It’s highly likely that Buffet’s accountants will help draft any such legislation (and they will put in clauses to protect their wealthy clients).
But the middle class will have no such safeguards. They can’t afford these accountants. They can’t buy the political clout to protect themselves from the system. And they will be crushed by this tax, which will suck ambition and ingenuity out of the most productive among us.
Unfortunately, the Marxists have been spoon-feeding the public these ideas for decades. They have populated our schools and the media.
The efforts are paying off. The biggest, nastiest arguments over the tax code are middle-class vs. middle-class. Laying out an argument such as above is hard to follow and hard to sum up in a nice ten- to thirty-second sound bite. It requires some thought and consideration. It’s harder to understand than are the vapid buzzwords and feel-good rhetoric of the Marxists.
Marxism’s bad history will also be ignored. Why is it that despite fifty years of gentle Communist guidance, most people in Cuba dwell in horrid conditions? Why is it that after ten years of feel-good fanfare and hype, there is still an impoverished population in Venezuela? Hollywood types love to tell us everything is great in these nations. Everything probably does look great from the five-star hotels in ritzy tourist areas or from the sections where the government-appointed tour guide decides to escort such people.
The beauty of the American system is that there is mobility among the financial classes. A rich person in the United States can go broke. A beggar can also work his way up the ladder. The determining factor to one’s success is not set by birth. This is the “American Dream”: to start with a company in the mail room and, after years of loyal service, become a vice president. This is what used to draw so many immigrants to our shores. In the “old country,” peasants were peasants, and nobles were nobles. One can still see these today in controversies such as Dominique Strauss-Kahn, where the French were outraged that a member of the ruling elite could be held to peasant laws.
What the left in this nation is now doing is trying to sever the link between the classes and return us to the “good old days” when everyone knew his or her proper place. This is why the Marxists hate the Tea Party — it comprises uppity peasants. Without class mobility, the Warren Buffetts and Nancy Pelosis of the world never have to fear being questioned or criticized. With a middle class, there is always a danger of some upstart causing trouble. And that’s why Marxists love illegal immigration from Latin America — it’s a whole group of people who already know their place.
Marx was at least correct when he said that those of wealth and privilege would do anything to keep it. And that’s what’s going on right now.
HT: American Thinker
