Hating The Rich

Mickelson's curse:

"...Something has changed, even as our society has become wealthier. Sure businesses have to comply with regulations and millionaires need to pay taxes, but somewhere we’ve shifted from honoring success to envying it, from viewing government as a limited tool to achieve a few necessary things (infrastructure, enforcing the rule of law) to seeing it as the be-all and end-all of our society.

But the scorn should be expected. The state uses a static model for calculating revenues. It assumes that if you raise taxes by, say, 20 percent that the state will get 20 percent more money. In the real world, people move to lower-tax places or work less or hide more of their income, and the government gets 20 percent of a smaller pie.

If wealthy people keep leaving, then the state will have to pare back its budget. Perhaps the backlash against Mickelson is a sign of desperation by those who understand there might be limits to how many golden eggs the geese keep laying..."

I don't get it either. I don't know why a guy like Mickelson gets evicerated for stating a simple fact. A fact so logical to anyone with a modicum grasp of how to invest cash. Money moves silently around all the time in reaction to government policy that threatens earned wealth.

Here in Quebec, it's a well established fact money is "parked' by investors waiting to move it to Ontario because of the PQ. Who in their right mind would want to forego more on, say, capital gains taxes?

Quebecois elites are as bad as their counterparts in Massachusetts. The former prevent their subjects from going to English schools while they send their own children to either English or American schools, while the latter ask for their subjects to pay more taxes while shifting around their luxury items to avoid paying those same (or proposed) tax hikes.

Above that, and it's been a consistent theme on this blog, there's a meek envious streak among peopl these days against all things wealthy. Some will say, "it's not the rich we hate, it's those who inherit and do nothing we have a problem with!" Meanwhile, the same people won't extend that logic to, say, poor people who sit on their asses all there collecting welfare.

It's a problem because policy is being formed around this attitude.

Heck, Obama (that transformational figure - I hate the word, makes me think of tyrants) constantly plays that shtick. For all his weaknessess, I don't recall the dreaded Bush focusing so much empty rhetoric on dividing people under the guise of the "greater good."

Meh. It got him elected for a second term.