National Review All Snitty About Poors And Taxes For A Change

Deroy Murdock at the NRO is really peeved, you guys, because he’s somehow accidentally managed to hear about things like “income inequality” and “fairness.” He’s TRIED to cover his ears and go la la la la la la and never ever watch anything other than Fox News, but that doesn’t drown out the screams of the class warriors coming for him with their pitchforks, so he’s trying a new strategy: avoiding the issue altogether by discussing income taxes and Margaret Thatcher, who made England such a free market paradise not at all filled with junkies and punks and Sid Vicious. And to be fair, he’s doing a pretty good job of it, managing to avoid touching on any of the substantive issues regarding income inequality and what it portends for the dystopian post-capitalist nightmare towards which we careen ever closer on a daily basis! Good job, Deroy Murdock!

Doodly doodly doo, sup Deroy?

Class warriors scream about imposing “fairness” on the rich, but their shouts become mumbles when asked what precise tax rate achieves “fairness.”

Wait, activists' policy prescriptions aren't specifically oriented around the tax code? (Except for the president's prescriptions, which have been fairly specific seeing as how they have numbers attached and everything?) No problemo, because the tax code is TOTALLY FAIR ALREADY because taxes! Income taxes, anyway, which are the most important measure of “fairness” because, well, EVERYONE knows that taxes are the opposite of “freedom,” duh. And the fact that the bottom 50% earned so little that they only earned 13.5% of national income? They should be THANKFUL because they only had 2.3% of their freedom taken away.

Liberals fall mum amid these facts: In 2009, the latest IRS figures demonstrate, the much-maligned top 1 percent of taxpayers earned 17 percent of national income and paid 37 percent of federal income taxes. The top 10 percent made 43 percent of national income and surrendered 70.5 percent of income-tax revenues. Meanwhile, the bottom 50 percent scored 13.5 percent of national income and paid just 2.3 percent of income taxes.

Give us a minute. Your Wonkette has fallen mum amid these facts. Let's talk about Margaret Thatcher while we recover, and fantasize that someone will actually want to pay us $500,000 to do something.

Like Thatcher, American conservatives should reject the concept of the income gap. Who cares about the gap, provided that those on the bottom advance in absolute terms? Consider two job offers: (a) You will earn $50,000, while your boss makes $55,000, just 10 percent more. (b) You will earn $500,000, while your employer gets $1 million — twice your salary. “Unfairness” suddenly looks spectacular.

Why, yes, it does look spectacular! Especially since the average CEO makes 343 times what his average worker makes, not "twice." Anyway, libruls, consider yourself pwned please. And if you happen to meet someone who is concerned about “income inequality,” you can totally shut them down by talking about a bunch of nonsense strung together to look like complete sentences.

Here’s how the Right should challenge the Left: “If you dislike income inequality, lift those with the least. Let’s adopt universal school choice, allow personal Social Security retirement accounts (to democratize long-term capital accumulation), radically reduce or eliminate America’s anti-competitive 35 percent corporate tax (to supercharge businesses), and pass right-to-work laws (so the jobless won’t fester outside closed shops). Let’s build the Keystone Pipeline (to create 20,000 blue-collar positions right now and lower everyone’s energy costs), frack for natural gas, and tame the EPA, OSHA, SEC, and other power-mad bureaucracies, so U.S. companies will stay here, and foreign firms will move in.”

NAILED IT. Policy genius, amiright? Anywho, to sum: income inequality isn’t a problem because of taxes, which are already more than fair. Also, someday someone might offer you a job for $500,000, which is pretty awesome. But if you still persist in wanting to help poor people, forget about income taxes. Just eliminate ALL taxes for corporations, destroy social security, privatize schools, destroy unions, and deregulate everything.

NRO: 1. Poor people: 0.