Hello All,

I have a liberal friend who loves folks like Gore and he is always proposing ideas that he thinks I will finally support. He thinks wealthy people should share their wealth and that they are greedy. He recently asked me if I liked the excess wealth tax being offered by Warren aka Pocahontas. This is my response. I know this still needs some work so I request your comments. Here it is:

WOW, did the wealthy demand you simply send them money? Did they propose cutting off a vital service if you failed to pay? What happened that they should be taxed in this special manner?

Phase One - Did the Billionaire offer you a product which at the moment of purchase the money in your hand was worth less than the dodad in the hand of the store clerk. In other words his dodad was more valuable than your cash. You gladly switched with the clerk. End of story.

Phase Two - The dodad you now own, proved to be worth more than the cash and is now enabling you to eat better, make more money and/or work fewer hours. You were happy with the dodad. It turned out millions of people had the same reaction. They worked less, made more money, expended less energy, watched more mindless TV and grew fat. End of story.

Phase Three - The guy who made the dodad grew wealthy. He took a bride 20 years younger, the college where he dropped out now awarded him a honorary doctorate, Time magazine made him man of the year, he ponders a run for the presidency, he demurs, and he listens to a buffoon politician and supports a crackpot science concept. The guy who bought his dodad, who grew fat sitting on the couch says, "Yeah! What a great guy!" End of story.

Phase Four - The fat guy on the couch begins to think, dang that guy has a lot of money, forgetting the benefits he gained from that dodad he purchased years ago. The fat guy on the couch begins to think that guy has too much money. The fat guy on the couch can not decide who has too much or too little money. A mooching politician, a friend of the buffoon politician supporting the phoney science, begins to observe a group of people who are very envious of the guy who made a lot of money making a certain dodad that made life better for millions of people and who are now fat couch sitters. End of story.

Phase Five - The mooching politician has a big idea. Let us tap into the resentment toward the billionaire dodad maker and propose an excess wealth tax. A tax that no one can objectively determine because no one knows how much wealth is excessive. Ah ha, we will do it by consensus just like the buffoon politician did with his science proposal. So Madame Moocher raised some trial balloons. The fat guy on the couch cheered, spilling his popcorn with the fat free imitation butter. Madame Moocher proposed how to spend the tax revenue from excessive wealth: gender issues in Pakistan, classical orchestra in Scranton, beds for folks on the southern border, and the list ends at 308 pages. The fat guy on the couch was active in the process of feeling which issues were worthy. End of story,

Phase Six - There were a few folks who knew the wealth tax for what it truly was - Theft. They dug out their Bibles, the ones they had saved from confiscation. They turned to an ancient story that appears in the early chapters of the Holy Book. The Holy Book is not used often these days, most folks sitting on couches think governments can determine what is right via the process of consensus. The Holy Book enumerated a concept known as the Ten Commandments which originally became the basis for most laws, in most countries. Those that know the Ten Commandments told the moochers, the buffoons and the couch sitters that their proposals violated four of the ten commandments:

1. You shall not have strange gods before me - idol worship;
2. You shall not steal - taking money from one person to give to another;
3. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor - telling others bits of information known not to be true; and
4. You shall not covet your neighbor's goods - being jealous of those who work hard to honestly gain material things to be used for their enjoyment. End of story.