There are no property rights in the United States…at least, none that the State deigns to honor.
Do you remember Teresa Ghilarducci? I do. Any American who has a 401(k), an IRA, or some equivalent should know about her and her chief ambition:
Democrats in the U.S. House have been conducting hearings on proposals to confiscate workers’ personal retirement accounts — including 401(k)s and IRAs — and convert them to accounts managed by the Social Security Administration.
Triggered by the financial crisis the past two months, the hearings reportedly were meant to stem losses incurred by many workers and retirees whose 401(k) and IRA balances have been shrinking rapidly.
The testimony of Teresa Ghilarducci, professor of economic policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York, in hearings Oct. 7 drew the most attention and criticism. Testifying for the House Committee on Education and Labor, Ghilarducci proposed that the government eliminate tax breaks for 401(k) and similar retirement accounts, such as IRAs, and confiscate workers’ retirement plan accounts and convert them to universal Guaranteed Retirement Accounts (GRAs) managed by the Social Security Administration….
The current retirement system, Ghilarducci said, “exacerbates income and wealth inequalities” because tax breaks for voluntary retirement accounts are “skewed to the wealthy because it is easier for them to save, and because they receive bigger tax breaks when they do.”…
All workers would have 5 percent of their annual pay deducted from their paychecks and deposited to the GRA. They would still be paying Social Security and Medicare taxes, as would the employers. The GRA contribution would be shared equally by the worker and the employee. Employers no longer would be able to write off their contributions. Any capital gains would be taxable year-on-year.
Socialists are forever talking about “inequality” (or in their more recent argot, “inequity”) because it affords them a pretext for seizing our money and property in pursuit of their agenda. It’s well established historically that “inequality” increases under socialism, but they’d rather we didn’t notice that. At any rate, they constantly seek rationales under which to “redistribute” what we’ve earned and saved. We must all be equally poor – except for our loving rulers, of course. Anything else would be “unfair!”
Today’s Democrats are socialists by another name. Their aim is the destruction of what remaining rights we have, that we might come fully under the control of the Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnibenevolent State – which, of course, will be captained by them. Their principal measure by which to achieve this end state is taxation. Just now, enraged over the horrendous deficits their insatiable spending has created, they’re threatening us with “tax Armageddon:”
“The main goal here is this can’t just be a debate about the 2017 tax cuts,” Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said. “This is going to be Tax Armageddon. It’s time to suit up.”
Senate Democrats have taken a different tack than their GOP tax-writing counterparts in prepping for 2025. While Republicans on the tax committees have set up working groups focused on specific issues, Finance Committee Democrats have not set up similar groups.
Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said he planned to hold both group and one-on-one meetings with his Finance panel colleagues to devise top priorities.
“I’m going to continue to work with my colleagues to build a revenue menu to get good ideas, my colleagues had a number of them,” he told reporters, adding that this approach will allow priorities like low-income housing tax credits to not get lost in the debate.
Wyden said he was struck by members’ commitment to raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans and companies.
Translation: “Is inflation near to killing you, Citizen? Never fear; we’ll finish the job.” Quoth Stephen Green:
The tax man never merely cometh for “the rich.”
[…]
The second issue is the Democrats’ longstanding desire to impose an unconstitutional wealth tax.
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Wa.) chairs the Finance Committee and last Thursday “revived his pitch to tax the appreciation of assets for those with at least $100 million in income,” the Wall Street Journal reported. “Wyden plans to run through the door on wealth taxes that the Supreme Court left open Thursday in its lamentable decision in Moore v. U.S.”
[Massachusetts Democrat Senator Elizabeth] Warren is already on board the wealth tax train, with threats of a 2% annual tax on the net worth of households with more than $50 million. But like the income tax — which was originally sold as only falling on “the rich” — the real target of a wealth tax is the retirement accounts (and appreciation in home values) of regular Americans because as bank robber Willie Sutton is supposed to have said, “That’s where the money is.”
The aggregate of savings in Americans’ private retirement accounts exceeds $20 Trillion. Nearly all of it consists of holdings in stocks, mutual funds, and bonds: the definition of “unrealized gains.” Add to that the inflation-fueled increase in the dollar-denominated values of privately owned homes: some trillions of dollars more. All of that is currently protected against taxation…and the Democrats want it.
Watch out, Middle America. If you’ve managed to save a bit, or if you own your own home, you’re under the Democrats’ crosshairs. Moreover, merely electing Republicans won’t protect you. Quite a lot of them, anxious to reduce the annual deficit without engaging in the painful and politically hazardous labor of reducing federal spending, are on board with the Democrats’ taxing desires.
As the man said in the song, “Ain’t but one way out” – and I’ve already told you what it is. Don’t expect to stumble over a gentler solution that’s just been lying on the sidewalk, waiting to be noticed. You won’t find any diamonds that way, either.