One Million Million

As the budgetary debate continues unabated within the political class and their media flacks, there seems to be emerging a recurring theme that has somehow gone unchallenged.

In the context of finding additional funds with which to use for the operation of government, that new catch phrase being trumpeted has been for “millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share”

It is indeed true that the United States tax code does offer certain and particular tax breaks and advantages to a few select citizens and corporations. On that basis alone, the tax code should be completely overhauled and restructured to insure a truly balanced framework with which to collect revenue. The debate should not be whether or not the government needs to be properly funded; of course it does. The debate should be on exactly what the government should be doing with that specified funding.

The question of ‘fairness’ relative to those aforementioned millionaires and billionaires however is nothing more than class envy and class warfare. Is not America the land where the only limitation on a citizen is their own desire in the pursuit of the American dream? By charging unfairness to those who have worked hard and played by the rules by definition makes that effort seem somehow unfair , bordering on apparent criminality,  to the rest of  the populace who have chosen not to choose a sizeable financial fortune as their particular definition of success. This is as it should be in the world’s foremost democracy. Each man left alone by the government to his own pursuits.

The ridiculous part of this debate of fairness however is that no one seems to have actually done even the most basic of math relative to ‘fairness’ and the national budget.

To wit:

The proposed federal budget for fiscal year 2012 is for roughly 3.8 trillion dollars: to better understand that number, it is necessary to remember that one trillion is a million million.

With that fact, this is how the numbers would work if the millionaires and billionaires paid what some of the political class would deem to be their fair share.

It would be inappropriate to garnish 100 percent of either an individuals or business’ income, so we will ignore those whose wealth is just 1 million dollars. Since the argument holds that millionaires and billionaires should pay their fair share, let us use that million dollars as a benchmark, so let us consider a total wealth of two million dollars to be the threshold for this scenario.

It could be safely presumed that those whose wealth exceeds two million dollars would number at about one million entities -personal and corporate.

If we were to confiscate one million dollars from each of those million pocketbooks, we would only acquire ONE trillion dollars. The shortfall of almost three trillion dollars would need to come from the rest of the populace. That redistributed wealth would not fund the government for more than three months and pay nothing towards the national debt.

Of course, once the fact that one million dollars a year was being confiscated from ones wealth, what exactly would the motivation be to succeed and prosper? Those million picked pocketbooks would begin to shrink, putting an even greater responsibility on those who could ill afford to appease the governmental appetite for funds.

The budget process is broken; there are a million reasons why, but one inescapable fact; it must be fixed and brought into balance or the land of prosperity will dwindle and fade into the dusty pages of history.