Gallup has a new poll that shows, by a slight majority, that fewer Americans favor “soak the rich” redistribution schemes by the government. Here’s their graph of that trend:
I guess this is a good thing, that fewer people believe wealth should be redistributed by placing heavy taxes on the rich. Still nearly half of the people in the country believe it should happen! Gallup’s analysis of the data from the survey shows that these views on redistribution are highly partisan:
Notice that 71% of Democrats, and only 28% of Republicans believe the government should be involved in the redistribution of income. It’s also heavily skewed toward folks that make less than $30,000. So, it’s not surprising that you heard the boy king Obama (*DfOaLG) say to Joe the Plumber that we need to “spread the wealth around.”
But why is this? Why do so many people believe that the fruit of one man’s labor should be taken, at the point of a gun (and that is effectively what we’re talking about here), and given to someone else who didn’t earn it? Why do we have laws instituted to take, upon the event of death, half of what a person accumulated (and paid taxes on) over the course of his life? Why do so many believe that this is morally justifiable, or fiscally sane? When did we pass the tipping point from when folks in America thought themselves to be independent and self-reliant to now, when almost half of the population believe it’s right to forcibly take from one man to give to another? Where did we get these ideas?
I have ideas about it. What do you think?
*Descended from Olympus and Lightworker Genius, on the order of Wile E. Coyote
