A number of the sci-fi geeks I work with at Dragon*Con are liberals. Generally speaking, I have no problem getting along with them whenever we meet up face-to-face. But occasionally, I will see these folks post things on Facebook that run the range from nonsensical to downright outrageous. Hence, I am starting a new feature on this blog: Responding to Annoying Liberal Remarks on Facebook. If I see something on Facebook that just bothers the hell out of me, I’m going to vent about it here.
On the chopping block today is a status update left by writer acquaintance of mine that demonstrates what can only be described as willful liberal blindness. Regarding the recent tax deal proposed by Obama and the Congressional Republicans, he states:
After the tax deal yesterday, I will never take anything anyone says about the national debt seriously again. Please.
Right. Because the only way we can possibly get out of the red is to raise taxes on the so-called “rich.” Forget about slashing nonessential government spending.
As Citizens Against Government Waste and other such groups have repeatedly documented, a substantial portion of our national budget has been set aside for things we don’t really need. Do we need a National Endowment for the Arts, for example? During the Renaissance, artists used to seek out wealthy patrons to fund their work. Why, exactly, was it necessary for the government to take over this function?
When a household is forced to take a pay cut, do you know what most responsible families do? They pull out their budgets, examine them critically, and decide what they can do without. “Let’s see — I can stop getting a caramel frappe from Starbucks every morning. And we can downgrade our cable service. How many of those 500 channels do we actually watch anyway? And I suppose we should drop our gym membership. We can take walks for free.”
Granted, some families just sign up for credit cards and run up huge debts they can’t pay off — but this will eventually bite them in the butt in the end. Trust me, I know. As a somewhat impulsive and (I think) mildly bipolar young(ish) woman, I have struggled since college to practice fiscal responsibility, and my credit score still reflects that.
The liberal response to a budget shortfall is always the same: tax the “rich” and/or print more money. They refuse to look critically at our federal and state budgets and make hard decisions about what we do and do not need. As far as they’re concerned, we need everything, including the National Endowment for the Arts. And quite frankly, this is absolutely ridiculous, childish thinking. I’m sure we can find waste in every department — and yes, that includes the military. Let’s actually get down to the grown-up work of giving up our federal lattes.
And by the way, I’d also like to challenge, once again, the liberal idea that the “rich” deserve to be punished with higher taxes. First of all, as Thomas Sowell and other conservative writers have correctly pointed out, the upper class in the U.S. is always in flux. People climb into and fall out of the highest strata all the time. We do have the occasional heir or heiress who lives off of daddy’s trust fund, but most people who manage to exceed the magic $250,000 mark worked to get there. We don’t live in feudal Europe. We don’t have a large, permanent class of people living off their hereditary fortunes.
Consider a neurosurgeon. The median salary for a neurosurgeon definitely falls beyond the “rich” line. But what did that affluent neurosurgeon have to do to get there? First, he had to go to college for four years to get a bachelor’s degree. Then he had to go to medical school for another four to seven years (depending on whether he went for the MD or the MD/PhD). Then he had to spend several more years practicing as a resident. Then, perhaps, he had to spend a few more years practicing as a fellow. At no time during this long and arduous training process was he ever “rich” — and much of his income was probably used to pay off his student loans.
Liberals: are you seriously going to tell this gentleman who lived with far less for almost two decades to get where he is now that he must now cough up a huge chunk of his earned income to fund your pet government projects? How is this moral? How is this fair? And most importantly, how is this going to inspire others to put in the same hard work?
In order to believe that a neurosurgeon who makes, say, $300,000 per year should be punitively taxed, you have to believe that this neurosurgeon got where he is by stomping on the heads of the poor. This is simply not the case. Indeed, this is not the case for the vast majority of people who make more than $250,000 per year. Do “fat cats” exist? Yes, but here’s the funny thing: most of those who fit the left’s stereotypical vision of the “rich” have already safely stored their wealth away where you will never be able to touch it. In the meantime, the honest rich – those like the neurosurgeon who have struggled for years to be successful – will bear the brunt of the left’s despicable attempts to stoke class warfare. To this, I say no thanks.
everymatt 