A critical position of the current administration is that the spread between the have and the have-nots has widened to a level that offends their sense of social justice.

To level the playing field as they see necessary, they would like to increase taxes on the wealthy, reduce home mortgage deductions at the higher brackets, reduce charitable deductions for the higher brackets, expand the upper brackets subject to the social security tax, and promote higher wages through a bill giving unions the power of protected intimidation with the assistance of a federal agency forcing binding arbitration on private businesses.

While I have written repeatedly about these misguided and destructive intrusions we need to remember that their motivation is to reduce the discrepancy between the wealthy and the rest.

There is some debate how bad the discrepancy is. The top 1% pay nearly 40% of the taxes. Our taxes are more progressive than most countries, even when taking into account the discrepancy in income. The progressiveness has actually increased during the eight years of George Bush. But such facts do not seem to sooth their sense of moral indignation.

The catastrophic meltdown in the financial sector must have clearly impacted the wealthy far more. Big salaries on Wall Street have become far less common in the last 9 months. Big bonuses have dropped so much that the local governments lament the loss in tax revenues on those immoral bonuses.

Certainly the lower income had very little money with the goniff, Bernie Madoff. So many of the wealthy lost so much from this single thief that it must be some sort of divine retribution against the wealthy who have consumed such a disproportionate share of the people’s pie.

Hasn’t the destruction of investment balances by the fools of Wall Street and the thieves like Madoff served the administration’s goal of leveling the playing field?

Has the cosmic sense of supreme justice or Karma done the work of the moral supremacists? Isn’t the world a more fair and just place as a result?

Why aren’t they happy?

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