Taxing and Spending

Some have questioned how President Obama paid for his Ivy League education; I wonder why he paid for it.  If you can graduate from Columbia and Harvard without knowing the difference between taxing and spending, you should ask for your money back.

At his press conference last week, the President, for the umpteenth time, described leaving the existing tax rates alone as “spending”.  He said we had “better things to spend our money on” than not raising taxes.  

Did he really say “our money”?  Oh yes, he did.  That’s what they call your paycheck these days over at the White House; and you keeping what you earned is now considered foolish spending.  The press corps – more refund-eligible Ivy League alumni who apparently majored in economic illiteracy and minored in Marx – did not call him on it. 

Perhaps in the Obama household, Barack resisting his urge to steal Sasha’s babysitting money is the same thing as Michelle buying a dozen pair of Jimmy Choos.   

But for us rubes who grew up in small towns and worked our way through state schools, the distinction between not-stealing and spending is quite obvious.  In fact, most of us figured out complicated things like taxes, spending, and the income gap long before we ever graduated from high school. 

When we were 5 or 6, we shoveled snow for a nickel a sidewalk.  The kids who shoveled a lot of sidewalks had a lot of money for candy.  Those who did one or two and then went sledding didn’t have as much.  There’s your income gap.

When we were 8, we got paper routes.  Some kids took bigger routes, worked longer and carried the heavier bags, and we made more money than the kids who took the short routes and got done earlier to go play.   There’s your income gap.

When we were 10, we were big enough to pick rocks in the fields; we got paid by the rock. The longer and harder you worked the more you made.  Some kids hit it all day long, and some kids were off riding their bikes by noon.  There’s your income gap.

Later in summer, we picked strawberries and got paid by the quart. If you could squat all day and had nimble fingers, you made serious cash.  The 10 year-olds weren’t very good at it, but by 14, we became skilled and (comparatively) wealthy.  There’s your income gap.

Where I grew up, we had a different idea about entitlements – if another kid tried to steal your stuff, you were entitled to a bob him in the nose. And when his parents found out why he had a shiner, he was entitled to a heaping dose of shame and punishment at home. We didn’t do lawyers or community organizers up North.    

At 15, we started to work in stores, run errands for contractors, or work for our dads who were tradesmen.  Our first real paychecks, and the awful discovery of tax withholding.  The Governor took it?  Can I bop him in the nose?  I already had a bad attitude before Civics and Econ class confirmed my worst suspicions of government.    

Summers, after school, weekends – an introduction to time-and-a-half and punitive tax rates on those who worked longer and produced more.  But the kids who went the extra mile made a lot more than the kids who went swimming.  There’s your income gap.  

At 16 (well, close – I told you I’m from up North) you could drive, and that opened up a whole different world of income potential.  When I could drive the painting contractor’s car to pick up supplies, I got a big raise because I was more valuable to the crew.  There’s your income gap.

And the income gap was important when you were a 16 year old guy up North.  The guys who had worked and saved enough to get a car were cool, and girls went on dates with them.  Those of us without cars were jealous; but we would never think of demanding they share their cars, their money, or their girls. 

To be honest about it, if we could have “spread the wealth around” back then, we would have gone for the girls – to heck with the money and cars.  Maybe that is coming next from Mr. Obama, and why not; if the insured owe health care benefits to the uninsured, don’t married people owe conjugal benefits to unmarried people?    There is your morality of redistribution.      

Now, if you think the slop just falls out of the sky into the trough, then you probably think that the biggest, fattest pigs must have got that way by abusing the skinny, timid ones.  Those fat hogs must be punished and the slop must be redistributed by a benevolent and infallible farmer who cares that every little oinker gets a fair and equal portion. 

This makes perfect sense if you are a barnyard animal - or a liberal Democrat. 

But if you are a thinking human being who ever shoveled snow, picked rock, or worked weekends, you know that the slop does not fall from the sky; it is the product of someone’s labor, and it belongs to the people who earned it.  It is not “our money”; it is their money.  

And, Mr. President, leaving it alone is not the same as spending it; those are two different things and you can expect a figurative bop on the nose in November for trying to take what doesn’t belong to you.  If you need money, get yourself a refund from Columbia and Harvard and leave the rest of us alone.     

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order his new book, “Tooth Fairy Government.”