Republicans want you to believe that taxes are the same as early 20th century communist doctrine. They argue that taxing anyone at all is tantamount to their term of death: the redistribution of wealth. Yet this gaping fallacy neglects the fact that all governments, in every form from monarchies to democracies, utilize taxes to pay for government. Quite simply — and to us blatantly obvious — taxes are not a redistribution of wealth, because they provide services everyone uses, not transferring wealth from one to another.
Tax dollars hard at work
Transferring wealth from one to another comes in the form of investment, inheritance, property, things that make up wealth. Wealth is the type of money that people save up over time and use to build homes, invest in the stock market, put aside for retirement or a rainy day. There is no structure in place in America today that allows the government to take wealth away from anyone person and give it, in kind, to another person. This just does not exist.
Still, Republicans are quick to harp on social assistance programs as examples of redistribution of wealth. Money goes from those who have more to those who have less. But social assistance programs are not wealth-generating, they are temporary stop-gaps to keep people in their homes and food in their children’s bellies. No one is using food stamps to buy shares of Apple (the company, not the fruit). In fact if anything the programs are purposefully inadequate to make it as undesirable as possible to stay unemployed. Therefore, since assistance programs do not generate wealth, it cannot be a redistribution of wealth.
Republicans think that any tax, tax plan, tax idea, or especially tax increase is a redistribution of wealth, ignoring these critical services that we already can’t pay for. For our society to continue to function at the level we expect, we have to provide these services that Republicans talk so hard about cutting. That’s because so many of the services the government provides are deeply intwined in our everyday lives. As a result of fearing taxes, the divide between what we need and what we can actually afford explains our mounting debt.
Instead of fixing the debt problem through a balance of trimming services and raising taxes, Republicans focus on antiquated ideals of socialism and communal ownership, which would redistribute real wealth from one to many a la Karl Marx. There is nothing even remotely close to that happening today in any part of the world, even in China, where wealthy business people drive Porsches and live in penthouses like the wealthy anywhere else.
A redistribution of wealth is nothing more than a Republican ploy to poison the debate over taxes in their effort to eliminate services for the poor to close the debt. A baseless charge grounded in hatred.
