Hypocrisy and Those Eternal Scare Tactics…
I'm not entirely sure whether this is just gathered from various opinions I have read over the years or whether it was from an actual article I read, but somewhere I seem to remember a commentary that the infamous "they" want to keep the population scared because that means people are generally not able to think critically enough to be authentically informed.
I'm saying this because earlier today our local "Next Door" app blew up over Washington state's upcoming ”millionaire tax.”
This is basically a state income tax on your annual income above one million dollars. Meaning that if — for example — you make $1.2 million you owe 9% tax on $200,000.
The way people are screaming here in our local community you would think that somebody had set off a fart bomb in church!
Maybe I have lived a sheltered life, but I can barely fathom a million dollars as your total assets, let alone as you annual income, but — regardless — it seems pretty consistent that privilege comes with a *"price of admission, so why is it that the greater the privilege, the more people get possessed by the notion that they should be exempt from that price of admission?
Which brings me to the interesting thought that the whole MAGA movement — let’s not forget that stands for “Make America Great Again” — centers largely on longing to return to a ”golden era” of the US economy/society in terms of growth and prosperity mostly attributed to the 1950s and 1960s, along with the attendant ”family values.”
The somewhat myopic irony here is the fact that — according to the 1954 Internal Revenue Code, the top marginal tax rate in the USA was 91% on income over $200,000 for individuals or $400,000 for married couples. It seems that those who are screaming about taxes on high income have conveniently forgotten that the very time in the US that they idolize had some of the highest tax rates this country has ever had! And it's entirely possible that things worked so well because the tax structure actually supported the whole idea of having a ”middle class” in the country.
What makes it doubly ironic is that the very "MAGA hats" who are complaining about this new millionaire tax are actually also the people who were alive during that "wonderful" era of prosperity... they are conservative people in their 70s and 80s!
The gross inconsistency of thinking is absolutely appalling! But I guess there is no limit to the cognitive blind spots created by the rose colored glasses of passing time!
But I guess many people also suffer from what I would call ”selective vision.” This especially applies to the way the very wealthy have a tendency to view anything that could be pkaced under the heading of public policy — that is detrimental to the very wealthy — as either ”communism” or ”socialism” (by definition) without even examining what it is they're criticizing.
What I find really ironic about that is that they're apparently smart enough to amass millions, but not smart enough to understand the workings of a functional economy and government system. Either that, or they're so profoundly narcissistically selfish as to not give a toss about anything that is happening in the world beyond the tip of their nose.
I experienced an interesting departure from that a few days ago when I shared an interesting (and intentionally funny) reel from a contributor in Norway, showing two clips of pretty much the same very ordinary person boarding a commuter train, one with the caption "typical Norwegian person going to work" and then the second clip with the caption "Norwegian billionaire going to work."
It was an interesting reminder that it's not the money that annoys me so much as the twisted sense of superiority and entitlement just because you have money.
Regardless, I don't really feel sorry for someone who has made life choices resulting in it being a struggle for them to make it if there's a bit of extra tax on income above a million dollars.
Thanks for stopping by, and have a great remainder of the week!
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2026.09.30 01:32 PDT
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The income tax of today was pitched as a millionaire tax in 1913. It's perfectly reasonable to question any new tax which will inevitably expand to feed the bottomless maw of government.