Powerline has a graphic detailing tax breakdown for the richest according to their share of total income and taxes.

Differential treatment of groups of people based on income is a form of a discrimination. Where are the liberals defending the right to not be discriminated against according to income?

More from TaxProf

If Mr. Obama does succeed in raising tax rates on the rich, we’d also wager that the rich share of tax payments would fall. The last time tax rates were as high as the Senator wants them — the Carter years — the rich paid only 19% of all income taxes, half of the 40% share they pay today. Why? Because they either worked less, earned less, or they found ways to shelter income from taxes so it was never reported to the IRS as income.

So if I’m understanding this correctly, if people discover that the income they gain from working hard is taken by the state they are much less likely to work that hard? That seems so surprising. People work to make money? Odd, never thought people were like that.

Look how this billionaire is squandering his wealth.

The machine, named Anton, in homage to Anton van Leeuwenhoek, a pioneer in microbiology, is a bold gamble to jump ahead of the most powerful general-purpose supercomputers by as much as a half decade.

It could be used to investigate problems of great scientific interest, like the folding of protein molecules, and in the design of drugs based on the simulated biological activity of different molecules.

The effort is being led by David E. Shaw, a billionaire computer scientist. In the 1990s, Mr. Shaw was one of the most successful of an elite group of technologists pursuing computer-based trading strategies on Wall Street. Several years ago Mr. Shaw, who is also a major investor in Schrdinger, a chemical simulation software firm, stepped away from day-to-day management of his investment firm, D. E. Shaw & Company. He is now chief scientist of D. E. Shaw Research.

It just goes to show the old adage is true. Rich people will waste limitless wealth on luxury. Just think how much good this money would do in the hands of the state. Under Bush, the rich have gotten richer and have wasted that excessive wealth on things like ‘developing technology’. What about Carl from down the street? He might not like working, but needs another bottle of wine. How could that possibly be a waste? Your liberal heart is in the right place.

Last night I was watching my favorite show Hell’s Kitchen on Hulu when an advertisement by the state played. It was a commercial telling me to put my seat belt on because its the law.

Let me get this straight. The state forcibly takes my money and then uses it to create moral segments, which it plays during my favorite show. Effectively, I’m paying to be moralized to. Its like giving money to the church expect for the giving part. Because when it comes to the state you are compelled to pay.

Hey I have an idea. Let me keep my money and since I’m a big boy, I will decide whether I should wear my belt or not. I honestly can’t believe some people think a massive federal government is the solution to people not wearing their belts. News Flash: Its not.

In a previous post, Andrew responds to my assertion that the democrats are responsible for increasing taxes.

Get real. All the unbalanced budgets that have raised teh national debt by trillions and trillions of dollars in the last 30 years have come about under republican presidents. Sure, the republicans never actually raise taxes because they’re more concerned about winning elections than actual fiscal responsibility, but they’re the ones SPENDING 20% of the GDP.

Sigh. In regards to high taxes I didn’t say the sole responsibility of high taxes was because of democrats I said they were mostly responsible. In the following sentence I criticized the current president, who in case you were unaware is a republican.

While I take the point that military expenditure make up a large portion of my taxes I would like to point out that the social program expenditures for the 2008 look like this:

* $608 billion (+4.5%) - Social Security
* $386 billion (+5.2%) - Medicare
* $209 billion (+5.6%) - Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program
* $324 billion (+1.8%) - Unemployment/Welfare/Other mandatory spending

For Military expenditures:

*$481.4 billion (+12.1%) - United States Department of Defense
* $145.2 billion (+45.8%) - Global War on Terror

Even without factoring in Social Security, the federal government is spending more money on social programs than the military. The social programs clearly are costing more. It’s also wise to point out that we are currently in the middle of a war and yet we spend much more on social programs then the military.

Let me expand on this point. Even if you don’t agree with the military action in Iraq you would most likely agree that it’s reasonable to see an increase in budget for the department of defense. In this way, one can say that increases in military expenditure are transitory, they expand when the military is engaged and retracts when we are at peace. This same point can not be made about social programs. Over the long term, social programs trend towards expansion. Complaining that the military receives a large proportion of the budget during war is not the same thing as complaining about how much of the budget is always devoted to social programs.

Furthermore, only a fool would argue that the bulk of political support for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Child Insurance, Unemployment, and Welfare is not democratic. Giving more money, and as consequence power, to the federal government is mostly the work of the democrats. They favor large more expansive government. In particular, the kind that never goes away unlike military budgets.

Doing some rough calculations, not including social security, social programs (Medicaid, Medicare, and Unemployment) make up about 30% of the budget. Including Social Security it’s about 50% of the budget. Military expenditures make up about 20% of the budget. I will grant that the bulk of increase over the last couple of years is attributable to the Middle East wars. I would hasten to add this increase is transitory and will be reduced as those conflicts come to an end. The same can not be said of social programs.

When I said:

I would also like to point out that the most of the policies that will lead to the federal goverment receiving over 20% of the GDP comes at the hands of liberal and democratic policy.

What I was actually referring to was these paragraphs in the original piece I linked to:

First, there are some differences between the Senate and House versions of the 2009 federal budget, but however the details are ironed out, the Democrats will kill President Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. If his promised veto is overridden by Congress, it will mean a minimum tax hike for every American taxpayer of about $3,000 annually.

The increase could be even more, though, because buried in the Democrats’ budget resolution are 17 “reserve” funds of additional taxing authority. Even without the reserve tax hikes, allowing the Bush cuts to expire will mean that 20.3 percent, or one of every five dollars, of gross domestic product will soon be consumed by government.

Proposed action that will push the Federal budget into taking 1 out of every 5 dollars the economy produces finds strong political support among democrats. As always, this is the case.

North Carolina’s Examiner has this to say about two Americas.

Tuesday is the deadline for filing federal income taxes. Half of American taxpayers will pay 97 percent of the individual income taxes the government will collect for 2008, according to IRS data. The other half will pay little or nothing, yet receive billions in benefits in the form of cash, subsidies, “free” services and other benefits, and loans. There are indeed “Two Americas,” but the two aren’t the rich and poor, but taxpayers and tax consumers. It’s going to get even tougher for the taxpayers in the near future, thanks to legislation being readied by Democrats who control Congress.

And can you say Jesus Fucking Christ!:

Even without the reserve tax hikes, allowing the Bush cuts to expire will mean that 20.3 percent, or one of every five dollars, of gross domestic product will soon be consumed by government.

It seems to me this is inverted. Why should the federal government tax so much money. It does not even provide local services for the citizens. Citizen’s taxes rates should be proportionally higher the more local that goverment is in relation to them. Cities should have the highest tax rates while federal government’s rates should be a trifling amount. It makes no sense to me that the state entity that I have the least control over receive the most of my tax money. Oh wait, that makes perfect sense to me now that I think about it.

I would also like to point out that the most of the policies that will lead to the federal goverment receiving over 20% of the GDP comes at the hands of liberal and democratic policy. That being said, President Bush has done a piss poor job of reigning in goverment spending and the current crop of presidential canidates will do no better, and in the case of the democrats, will exacerbate the problem. I can only imagine how much of the GDP will be forcibly stolen by the state to subsidize health care if Hilary Clinton makes it to the white house.

I find it ironic that the likes of Darwin complain about large companies and lobbyists using money to influence legislators but remain quiet when politicians implement policy to pay off large groups of voters with the money of other voters. Forcibly taking other people’s money to pay for the votes needed to win an election is just as corrupt if not more so than lobbyists influencing legislators by paying for dinners and trips. Yet liberals remain silent on this kind of corruption. If the politician uses the rhetoric of good intention then they can be pardoned for getting votes by giving away other people’s money. Hillary can forcibly take another quarter of our GDP so long as she brings free health care to the poor (aka her supporters).

An excellent post at TCS daily makes some interesting points equating the power of super wealthy people and politicians.

Montgomery County, Maryland, has an annual budget of $3.8 billion. This sum is under the control of a County Council with nine members. On an average per-politician basis, each County Council member controls just over $400 million a year in spending.

To put an annual spending figure of $400 million in perspective, consider this: if you had $8 billion in assets and earned 5 percent per year on those assets, that would give you $400 million in annual income. And few Americans have that much. The world’s wealthiest person is Warren Buffett, with $62 billion (admittedly he has often been able to earn more than 5 percent per year from investments). Bill Gates has $58 billion. Fewer than 40 Americans have more than $8 billion in assets, and their names are largely familiar to us–the Waltons of Wal-Mart, Sergie Brin and Larry Page of Google, and so on.

Can you name the members of the County Council in Montgomery County, Maryland? I can’t name very many of them, and I live there. Still, getting elected to the County Council in Montogmery County, which is pretty far down the ladder in terms of political power in the United States, enables you to control more annual spending than the wealth of Donald Trump or Steven Jobs.

At the Federal level, the Budget is $3 trillion. If you divide that by 535 (the number of of Senators and Congressmen), then on average each legislator controls over $5 billion in spending per year. That is more than even the world’s richest person could spend annually.

He goes on to argue that:

Thus, the comparison between legislators and the super-rich is actually quite apt. Both are able to exert an unusually large level of control over which worthy causes receive money. Financially, wealthy people and politicians have the same type of power. The difference is that politicians have much, much more of it, by orders of magnitude.

Making one final point he states:

The monetary comparisons only scratch the surface of the inequality and excesses of political power in the United States. Bill Gates might be said to control as much money as a member of the County Council where I live. But he does not have the power to, say, tell the people of the County where they can and cannot smoke, or to tell local businesses what wages they must pay their workers, or to decide whether a local concert venue will be devoted to folk music or to rock.

This is about right. Politicians that are in control of large budgets have more money to spend on others than any rich person could over possibly hope to spend. Not only do theses politicians have this ridiculous amount of power, they then have power to outright ban and regulate. Politicians have a ridiculous amount of power.

The author of the post argues for fracturing the political landscape as a means of dispersing the power. I think this is a very wise suggestion. The best way to protect a democracy is planting safeguards preventing the excessive consolidation of power. Make it harder to get laws passed.

I would also like to point out, since many of my reader lean left, that many of the income redistribution polices you support are the kinds of polices that give politician more power. If you think its right to forcibly take money from one group of people and place it into the hands of another you must realize you are giving power to a class of people whose job it is to define the ‘rich’ and the ‘poor’. In supporting such policy you are supporting the consolidation of power into the political class.

Both in 2000 and the current presidential race we hear rhetoric about uniting the country. As if it’s desirable that their is accordance between politicians. If you ask me such unity is scary and normally leads to policy that further consolidates power into an ever shrinking political class.

Over at Samizdata, Johnathan notes:

Another issue, of course, is this: democracy and liberty are not the same thing, a point that has been remarked at this blog many times before. For sure, democracy may - may - be the least-worst way to kick out a government and replace it with a hopefully better one, but the idea that freedom comes from letting 51% of the electorate steal from 49% of the electorate has precious little to do with liberty. The right to own property and enjoy its fruits unmolested is as important as freedom of speech or the right to self defence. Tax havens rile communitarians precisely because they are a standing reproach to the looters who use democratic mandates to justify their depredations. They act as a brake on the power of governments with a temporary majority in a democratic assembly every bit as powerful as other checks and balances such as independent courts and upper chambers. And as traditional checks and balances are eroded - as they have been in Britain recently - we need all the constraints on national and supranational power we can get.

Any back door you can build in to socialistic policy is a good a back door in my eyes.

Over at Asymetrical Information, Megan writes:

The Washington Times on the fate of Virginia’s “Tax me more” fund:

RICHMOND — State lawmakers can rule out Virginian’s offering up more of their hard-earned money to fix the $1.4 billion budget shortfall Gov. Tim Kaine announced this week.

At least that is what a peek at the so-called “Tax Me More Fund” suggests.

Since its inception in 2002, the fund has collected a total of $10,217.04.

This is what economists call “revealed preference”. What most of us are really in favor of is higher taxes on other people. If we wanted higher taxes on ourselves, we’d give the money to charity.

Its a nice reminder that taxation is absolutely a form of coercion no matter how good the liberal’s intentions are when they take the rich people’s money away from them.

Via Instapundit, Mark Perry notes:

In other words, just one corporation (Exxon Mobil) pays as much in taxes ($27 billion) annually as the entire bottom 50% of individual taxpayers, which is 65,000,000 people! Further, the tax rate for the bottom 50% is only 3% of adjusted gross income ($27.4 billion / $922 billion), and the tax rate for Exxon was 41% in 2006 ($67.4 billion in taxable income, $27.9 billion in taxes).

Thats money being taken away from a company that has a proven ability to use money efficiently. I can only imagine how much of that money could have gone to development of innovation resulting in more wealth for everyone. Instead, its locked up by the state because some people honestly believe that 27 billion annually is better off in the hands of the likes to Ted Stevens, Tom Delay, and Nancy Pelosi.

Its astounding to think how stupid people who prefer public control over private control can be.

Finally, from the Conference Board earlier this week — “Between 2002 and 2006, the percentage of U.S. households with discretionary income increased from 52.1 percent (57 million households) to 63.5 percent (73 million households).”

The author also notes how the MSM is all over it.