President Biden’s budget proposal for 2023 picks up the idea, popular among progressives, of taxing unrealized capital gains under the label “Billionaires Minimum Income Tax”. It differs in detail from the version that the Senator Wyden floated last year but retains the combination of administrative complexity and economic stupidity. I think that my critique of the Wyden proposal applies to this one, too, and you can read others here and here and many other wheres.
But this post isn’t about the idea’s well-known flaws. Instead, I want to take note of the reaction of some on the political Right who have suggested that BMIT is just what the current generation of plutocrats deserves. For example:
Rare is the wealthy man who actually stands up for America and American values any more. So let DC take their money and run. I don't care. I have 99 problems. Protecting Warren Buffett from the tax man is not one of them. . . .
The argument that confiscatory taxation of billionaires will lead to recession falls on ears deafened by the election of a billionaire-backed Biden. They made a recession inevitable. Undoubtedly, they will benefit from this recession as they did the last one.
The political calculus of the rich is pretty simple. Suck up to the liberals because conservatives will always back the rich, right? We are for limited government and therefore limited taxes.
But if the rich are now for unlimited government, then I have four words to say to them:
You pay for it.
My message for readers is quit being a patsy. Conservatives need to play hardball. If the billionaires aren't with us in opposing abortion, pedophilia and CRT, then why should we be with them on taxes?
When Instapundit linked to that effusion, comments were overwhelmingly positive. Well, when I hear Bill Gates’s yammering about how we need to eat fungus-derived ersatz meat in order to save Gaia, I sometimes feel like confiscating his wealth, just as I sometimes feel like slapping someone who speaks rudely to my wife. But I’ve managed to stifle both impulses.
Since the author of the screed just quoted is undeterred by the negative economic effects of a BMIT, let’s leave that aside and think instead about whether his venture into moral pragmatism will accomplish anything more than feeding a hunger for revenge.
Very few woke billionaires got rich by exploiting government largess. Taxpayers don’t subsidize Microsoft. Regulators don’t force anyone to buy from Amazon or subscribe to Bloomberg or waste time and brain cells on Facebook or Twitter. Google doesn’t have a legal monopoly on Internet searches. The primary way that Gates and Bezos and the rest made their fortunes was through free economic exchange.
They have used those fortunes, alas, to promote ideas that are inimical to civilization. One of those ideas is that men should be punished for espousing the wrong opinions. But let’s close our eyes to the irony of adopting the techniques of “cancel culture” for the purpose of expunging its partisans. After all, isn’t turnabout the only rule of fair play?
So realpolitik avers. But it also reminds us, “If you shoot at the king, you must kill him.” Joe Biden’s BMIT won’t reduce the wokexecs’ wealth by enough to diminish their influence materially, and conservative support for, or indifference to, the concepts of free speech and fair play won’t lead Michael Bloomberg to start reading Thomas Sowell. All that vengeance will accomplish is to make ordinary citizens poorer by putting economic obstacles in the way of innovations that improve the quality of life. The assault on civilized values will meanwhile continue unabated.
“Revenge is a dish best served cold.” And the reason is that vengeance in hot blood runs a high risk of missing its target and doing more damage to friends than to foes. If Western civilization survives that current assault, future historians’ damnatio memoriae of the propagators of wokeness will be more than sufficient retributive justice.
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