Taxes, Demographics and Elections

Reader comment on: Thomas Sowell on Taxing 'The Rich'

Submitted by J.Johnson (United States), Aug 20, 2010 11:40

I think Sowell's reference to "those who are promoting envy" applies to most of the Democrat Party's Congressmen and Senators, as well as, of course, President Obama. This effort makes complete sense, of course, when viewed thru the prism of elections and who-votes-for-who. Per the Wall Street Journal last week, Obama won just 43% of the white vote in 2008. In contrast, Obama won 83% of the non-white and Hispanic vote and still enjoys very high approval ratings among black and Hispanic voters. A cursory examination of Census data reveals that white Americans, 57% of whom supported McCain in 2008, have, on average, significantly higher incomes and net worth than black and Hispanic Americans. Irrespective of whether or not this disparity is justifiable, it is clear that Obama and the Democrats are aiming their rhetoric at a very important segment of their voting base because these particular voters benefit most from the redistributionist 'social justice' legislation that Sowell rightly finds so objectionable. A significant and rapidly expanding portion of the base of the Democrat Party is made up of free riders who pay little or no income tax and receive tens of billions of dollars in tax credits every year mostly taken from, to put it bluntly, white Republican voters. This situation not only punishes these voters now in the form of higher taxes but will continue to punish them far into the future because of the skewed payout and benefit formulas of Social Security and Medicare that markedly favor lower income beneficiaries.

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