The "tax the rich" rhetoric

By Guest Column Virginia Sparks —— Bio and Archives January 21, 2015

Comments | Print This | Subscribe | Email Us

Can we talk? Not as Republicans and Democrats but as American citizens?

We can mostly agree that large companies have the ability to control markets, raise a lot of money, influence legislation and pay very high salaries to the CEO who positioned them to have this power. The movers and shakers in our government, past and present, want some of the money that is used to buy the influence. So they legislate in favor of certain entities. The money spent on elections is obscene. It serves no one except a very few. And yet, the conditions exist for these patterns to continue. And this is where we disagree. Taxing the rich will not fix the problem. It can't. The combined wealth of those individuals won't fix the problem so their taxes certainly can't. We need to address the laws that pour so much money into the hands of a few. Level the playing field so that small and medium businesses can flourish. Allow real job creators to grow. The "tax the rich" rhetoric sounds good to the uninformed but in practice it doesn't work. We cannot tax ourselves into prosperity. Virginia Sparks