{"id":831134,"date":"2021-09-30T10:59:10","date_gmt":"2021-09-30T14:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=831134"},"modified":"2021-09-30T10:59:14","modified_gmt":"2021-09-30T14:59:14","slug":"when-politicians-call-for-fairness-theyre-usually-lying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/when-politicians-call-for-fairness-theyre-usually-lying\/","title":{"rendered":"When Politicians Call For \u2018Fairness,\u2018 They\u2019re Usually Lying"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fwhen-politicians-call-for-fairness-theyre-usually-lying%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=831134&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Spread-the-Wealth-is-a-LieArtboard-1-copy-21.jpg?w=1200&amp;h=800&amp;ixlib=react-9.3.0\" class=\"ff-og-image-inserted\" \/><\/div>\n<p>This week, President Joe Biden attempted to inject life into his ailing presidency by dragging out of the closet the hoariest of political cliches: \u201cfairness\u201d in taxation. Touting his new $3.5 trillion tax and spending bill, which would radically increase corporate taxes, personal income taxes and so-called sin taxes, Biden stated, \u201cIt\u2019s not enough just to build back; we have to build back better than before \u2026 I\u2019m not out to punish anyone. I\u2019m a capitalist. If you can make a million or a billion dollars, that\u2019s great. God bless you. All I\u2019m asking is you pay your fair share. Pay your fair share just like middle-class folks do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p data-slot-rendered-dynamic=\"true\">Of course, those who earn high incomes don\u2019t pay like middle-class folks do. They pay far, far more. IRS statistics show that the top 1% of income earners pay more in federal income tax than the bottom 90% combined \u2014 while the top 1% earned 21% of all income in 2018, they paid 40 % of all income tax revenue. The top 10 % paid over 70 % of all federal income tax. In fact, according to the American Enterprise Institute, those in the highest quintile of income earners pay, on average, well over $50,000 per year in net taxes \u2014 taxes minus government benefits received \u2014 while those in the bottom 60% of income earners <i>receive <\/i>net tax benefits. According to The Washington Post, the top 10 % of American income earners pay nearly half of all income taxes, compared with just 27% for the top 10% of Swedes, 31% for the top 10% of Germans, and 28% for France\u2019s top 10%.<\/p>\n<p>So what, precisely, does Biden mean by \u201cpay their fair share\u201d?<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps he means simple sloganeering. Like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez donning a Cinderella ball gown emblazoned with the words \u201cTAX THE RICH\u201d to the Met Gala \u2014 a dress made by Aurora James, a woman who owes tens of thousands of dollars in back taxes and who has received over $40,000 in federal pandemic aid \u2014 class warfare sloganeering is more about the sloganeering than the class warfare. No Democrat seems prepared to define what \u201cfairness\u201d constitutes, other than \u201ca word I use to pander to the rubes, while hobnobbing with the rich.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And Biden\u2019s \u201cfairness\u201d pitch has to do with good economic policy, of course. In 2008, then-Sen. Barack Obama was asked during a debate about raising the capital gains tax, even if it lowered net government revenue. He answered, \u201cI would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.\u201d In other words, Obama explicitly stated that he would <i>damage the economy <\/i>on behalf of a vague, kindergarten notion of equal outcome.<\/p>\n<p data-slot-rendered-dynamic=\"true\">In the end, the \u201ctax the rich to be fair\u201d notion rests on a simple lie: the lie that income distribution is purely a matter of privilege or luck. It isn\u2019t. In the main, in a free market system, income distribution is the result of successful decision-making that must be incentivized rather than punished if we wish to see a more prosperous society. Some people game the system; some are indeed beneficiaries of insider deal-making. But most success in capitalism is due to innovation, entrepreneurialism and creativity. Biden\u2019s \u201cfairness\u201d cuts directly against these core elements of progress on behalf of political pandering.<\/p>\n<p>If we truly care about fairness \u2014 a more nuanced and complete definition of fairness that encompasses rewards for productive decisions and disincentives for counterproductive decision-making \u2014 we must abandon the politically convenient notion that those who earn more have somehow stolen from the system and must be punished for their crimes. Lack of distributive equality does not equal unfairness, and anyone who argues differently abandons the real world \u2014 and the possibility of a better life for everyone \u2014 in favor of the flattering lie that all roads ought to end in the same basic material outcome.<\/p>\n<p><i>The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author\u2019s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>The Daily Wire is one of America\u2019s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/subscribe\"><i>member<\/i><\/a><i>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week, President Joe Biden attempted to inject life into his ailing presidency by dragging out of the closet the hoariest of political cliches: \u201cfairness\u201d in taxation. Touting his new &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-831134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=831134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=831134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=831134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=831134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}