One of my co-workers about a week ago walked past my desk and saw me reading the Daily Kos. As a conservative he was shocked and asked me why I read that blog as opposed to Michelle Malkin or another conservative. My answer was pretty simple, although I am a conservative I realize if you only read news and commentary told from one perspective, you are not getting the whole story. Generally about once a day I will take a few minutes to check out some of the prominent liberal blogs to get an idea how they feel about current events. On rare occasions I will find their commentary insightful, but unfortunately, most days are like today.

Today I visited the Huffington Post, which is one of, if not the most popular liberal blog on the net. One of their contributors Barbara Ehrenreich had an article titled Banish the Bloated Overclass. You do not need to be Karl Marx to figure out where she is going with this piece.

She starts off by praising a Sunday New York Times magazine article written by Larry Summers who is “obsessed with the statistic that, since 1979, the share of pretax income going to the top 1 percent of American households has risen by 7 percentage points, to 16 percent. At the same time, the share of income going to the bottom 80 percent has fallen by 7 percentage points.”

As the Times puts it: “It’s as if every household in that bottom 80 percent is writing a check for $7,000 every year and sending it to the top 1 percent.”

Speaking as someone who belongs to the ‘bottom 80 percent’ group, I can assure you I have written no such check. In fact, my tax liability for last year wasn’t even close to $7,000. A recent Tax Foundation study found that American households with incomes in the lowest fifth received $7.86 of spending benefits for every dollar paid in taxes, while the wealthiest fifth received just 42 cents.

As I wrote earlier, those with incomes of more than $100,000 paid 82 percent of the total. As a whole, the bottom three-fifths of income earners amounting to 76 million households receive more dollars of government spending than they pay in taxes, resulting in a net fiscal redistribution of between $990 billion and $1.49 trillion.

Those whom the author chastises for their hard work and increased earnings, are subsidizing the poor, effectively offering them a crutch to hobble through life on. The problem is the longer you rely on a crutch, the harder it is to stand on your own two feet again. The author, in her infinite economic wisdom offers a solution. Don’t slowly remove the crutch, allowing the person to gradually become accustomed to standing on his or her own two feet again, just kick it out from under them, and hope they don’t fall down.

Ms. Ehrenreich’s solution to the economic disparity in this country is truly the most laughable one I have seen yet.
“Lowenstein notes, that “if the very upper crust were banished to a Caribbean island, the America that remained would be a lot more egalitarian.” Well, duh. The point is that it would also be more prosperous, at the individual level, and democratic. In fact, why give the upper crust an island in the Caribbean? After all they’ve done for us recently, I think the Aleutians should be more than adequate.

One thing I do agree with is if the very upper crust were banished our country would be more egalitarian… because everyone would be poor. Without the “very upper crust” I wonder where Ms. Ehrenreich believes jobs are going to come from? Where is the money for the entitlement programs liberals love so much going to come from?

Ms. Ehrenreich states at the beginning of her article that she has been accused of being a Marxist. The truth is, there is no term to describe her economic ideas other than dumb. Marxism teaches “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”. What she would like to do is banish those with the ability, leaving only those with needs.

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Politics, Taxes