"I'm a capitalist," tweets President Joe Biden.
I’m a capitalist. If you can make a billion dollars, go get it.
— President Biden (@POTUS) October 8, 2023
Just pay a little more in taxes.
It’s time billionaires pay a 25% minimum tax.
President Biden gives the all-clear to make a billion dollars before endorsing a higher tax rate for anyone who does.
Making a billion dollars is uniquely difficult in 2023 because of the policies spearheaded by Biden and his administration in conjunction with Democrats in Congress. One of the reasons for that unique difficulty is contained in the president's tweet. High taxes, and a minimum of 25 percent is a very high tax rate, reduce the amount of capital had by those who use their dollars (billions, in this example) to help drive the economy forward through spending, investment, job creation, philanthropy and other avenues. Those who are considered "the rich" comprise a proportionally small number of the overall population, so there is not a huge political downside (in potential votes) for many on the left to ridicule those who earn a lot of money and those who have a lot of money; and ridicule the wealthy the left has repeatedly done. See Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D-Massachusetts) Twitter feed for further examples. Billionaires who fund Democratic campaigns must be hard of hearing.
High prices are another of the factors that cause making a billion dollars in 2023 to be uniquely difficult. President Biden has presided over an economy that has experienced the highest recorded levels of inflation in decades. During that time, he and congressional Democrats, holding all legislative ability for two years, pushed an agenda of more spending. A billion is a million millions. In dollars, that is a lot of money. Billions of dollars are spent with regularity and in bulk by the federal government.
And there is the regulatory environment to consider as a unique difficulty in making a billion dollars. If a business has to allocate more money, more time, more manpower, and more resources to comply with federal regulations, some which are highly questionable at the very mildest characterization, that business will be left with less money, less time, less resources, and less hiring ability. The inevitable result will be fewer jobs, fewer goods produced or services offered, and reduced quality goods and services.
What works is an economy that can work. Innovators, inventors, entrepreneurs, business owners, and all who keep the U.S. economy going are most free to create and produce when government is least involved in the creation and production.
That the president of the United States would tweet "I'm a capitalist" is absurd and is a commentary on the state of free markets in 2023. Those who champion free enterprise have clearly done an inadequate job of explaining why our system of economic trade through doing business with one another helped propel our nation to become the world's leading economy. In turn, we as a nation have done an inadequate job explaining to the rest of the world why economic freedom is vitally important for them. Higher tax rates are not the American answer to the economic problems facing us today, nor is spending more billions or finding increasingly creative ways to regulate an already overregulated economy.
Democrats are in love with the idea of redistribution. Beyond safety nets for those who very much need help, they have banged the drum of taking from the wealthiest in a confiscatory manner and redistributing it to those who are not considered to be wealthy. But that is not investment. It may be psychologically soothing to think of giving the wealth of billionaires to those who have much less, but it is not a serious and long-term solution. The economy and the individual are far better served by the billionaire hiring the one who has less to earn over a long period of time. But Democrats seem to approach all societal issues through the lens of government.
Whether it is union meddling, media malpractice that leads to misinformation, straight-up lying by those who have oversized platforms or some other obfuscation, too many people know not of why our economic system leads the world; why the continuance of our economic system is vitally important; and why the agenda pushed by leftist, statist Democrats is the biggest threat to economic freedom on planet earth.
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