Define fair

President Obama is once again promoting fair taxes and wants to increase taxes on the rich. If you, like most Americans, feel as if you are just getting by in this economy, then his promises of spreading the wealth may sound pretty good. But are they really fair?

In 2009, the top 1% wage earners paid nearly 37% of the income taxes. Why should someone be penalized for earning a higher wage? Most of the rich got there by earning college degrees, working longer hours, or doing necessary jobs that are just not very appealing to many people. In other words, they worked hard for it.

If paying higher taxes based on your income was fair, then why don’t property owners pay property taxes based on income levels? How many times do you see retired folks selling the house they’ve owned for most of their lives simply because they can’t afford to pay their taxes as their fixed income levels do not keep up with the ever increasing property taxes? The sad part is these folks have, in many cases, paid many times more in taxes than they actually paid for their property. And when it comes to school taxes, Hillary was wrong when she said that it takes a village to raise a child. It actually takes a property owner.

The Bible, Koran, and Hindu writings all say to tithe at 10% of your income. The world’s prominent religions seem to think an equal tax rate is fair, I’m not sure why Obama feels differently. The only fair, non-subjective, tax is a flat tax.

Our founding fathers never intended a federal income tax but even if they had, they never would have agreed with the idea of increasing tax rates as your income goes up. High taxes was a major contributor to the colonies revolting and forming our own country. Our Declaration of Independence, our whole reason for becoming our own nation, states in its opening that we are endowed with "certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". Somewhere along the way, liberal ideology took this to mean that our government is responsible for everyone's happiness and that line of thinking can't be any farther from what our founders intended.

Nowhere in that statement does it say we have the right to happiness, but we do have the right to pursue it. Too many politicians (mostly liberal democrats) seemed to have missed the whole meaning to the most important part of our Declaration of Independence. Our constitution gives us the protection and freedom so that we can PURSUE happiness, but you have to be willing to go out and earn it.

During the Clinton administration, Microsoft was creating an average of 20 new jobs every week and the company still employs about 40,000 people. Bill Gates was the founder and CEO of Microsoft and became the richest man in the world. He paid more income tax than anyone ever had and how did the government reward him? They sued him. They hounded him for years and the company had to spend many millions of dollars defending themselves when that money could have been used to create even more jobs. The sad part is while our tax dollars were being spent suing Bill Gates, Bin Laden was busy bombing our embassies and warships overseas. Too bad the Clinton administration didn't pursue Bin Laden, who wasn't paying any federal income tax, as vigorously as they did Bill Gates.

We should be rewarding good fiscal behavior, not over-taxing it. Instead of coming up with ways to tax the money from the rich, why not let capitalism come up with a way to make the rich spend their money right here in our own country.