Walter Williams On The "Tax The Rich" Meme

I touched on it here last night, Walter E. Williams takes it on so much better than I ever could because, well, he's Walter E. Williams:

This year, Congress will spend $3.7 trillion dollars. That turns out to be about $10 billion per day. Can we prey upon the rich to cough up the money?

According to IRS statistics, roughly 2% of U.S. households have an income of $250,000 and above. By the way, $250,000 per year hardly qualifies one as being rich. It's not even yacht and Learjet money.

All told, households earning $250,000 and above account for 25%, or $1.97 trillion, of the nearly $8 trillion of total household income. If Congress imposed a 100% tax, taking all earnings above $250,000 per year, it would yield the princely sum of $1.4 trillion. That would keep the government running for 141 days, but there's a problem because there are 224 more days left in the year.
[. . .]
According to the Forbes 400, America has 400 billionaires with a combined net worth of $1.3 trillion. Congress could confiscate their stocks and bonds, and force them to sell their businesses, yachts, airplanes, mansions and jewelry. The problem is that after fleecing the rich of their income and net worth, and the Fortune 500 corporations of their profits, it would only get us to mid-August.

The fact of the matter is there are not enough rich people to come anywhere close to satisfying Congress' voracious spending appetite. They're going to have to go after the non-rich.

Be sure to read the entire thing.

I'm pretty sure this happens to most people but when I was a kid, whenever I would happen upon an extra buck or two, it would usually be spent 5 different ways in my mind. Usually before I got a block away from my house on the way to the corner store.

Same thing with Congress. Increasing revenues only allow more spending when more spending is what is not needed.