TOS Blog: Daily Commentary from an Objectivist Perspective

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Harry Reid and Company’s Latest Immoral Scheme

Posted by Joshua Lipana at 10:42 pm

As part of the left’s ongoing assault on productive Americans, Sen. Harry Reid is leading the senate Democrats in an effort to impose a new 5.6 percent surtax on people making a million dollars or more. This is economically stupid and morally wrong.

Generally speaking, people who make a million dollars or more do so by means of businesses they own; they run their businesses by employing people to do the various jobs involved; and they employ people by means of the revenues generated by the businesses. To confiscate more money from these business owners is to further prevent them from expanding their businesses and creating more jobs—and thus to cause more unemployment. That is economically stupid.

More importantly, individuals, including wealthy ones, have a moral right to the fruits of their efforts; they earned the money in question (or were given it by someone else who earned it), thus they have a moral right to keep, use, and dispose of it as they see fit. To confiscate their wealth is to violate their rights, and to confiscate more of their wealth is to violate their rights to a greater extent. That is morally wrong.

What does this say about Sen. Reid and company?

Related:

• The Rise of American Big Government: A Brief History of How We Got Here
• Altruism: The Moral Root of the Financial Crisis

Image: Wikipedia Commons

Posted in: Business and Economics, Individual Rights and Law