Why Should Nancy Pelosi Spend Your Money?

“Six million seniors are deprived of meals!” cried Nancy Pelosi recently about proposed cuts to the federal budget. Of course, researchers quickly refuted Congresswoman Pelosi’s numbers, but her statement reflects President Obama’s campaign rhetoric, “When you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” In a speech today, President Obama is apparently set to argue that rich people should pay more in income taxes so that people like Congresswoman Pelosi’s seniors will not miss any benefits.

“Redistribution” is the mantra of the political left, but it is in fact one of the great heresies of the age. You do not create wealth by redistributing it. In fact, you give rich people incentives to hide their wealth, and avoid investments. Most of the wealth that is taken from the rich goes to bureaucrats in Washington, but those few dollars that do trickle down to poor people often give them incentives not to work, but to collect checks from the government instead. In other words, “redistribution” is a triple disaster: It creates no wealth, it discourages entrepreneurs from investing, and it gives poor people incentives to remain poor as dependents on government.

Let’s look at “redistribution” logically. I wonder how many of Ms. Pelosi’s supposed hungry seniors have children in their lives. Why do you suppose these children are not taking their parents to lunch? Because government is doing it for them. If federal dollars were no longer used to feed these seniors, many would renew ties with their families–and we could reduce our $1,500,000,000,000 deficit for this year.

As for President Obama, the richest 1% of the population now pays almost 40% of all income tax revenue. How much more does he think they should pay? The bottom 50% of income earners now pay 2.9% of all income taxes. How much less should they pay? At what point, does redistribution contradict the Founders promise of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”?