No representation without taxation!

That seems to be what Jerry Pournelle is saying:

I have no great objection to decreasing the large gap between rich and poor, but I do have an objection to raising government revenue by soaking the rich. If you want to make a case for distributism, in which enormous fortunes are confiscated and distributed evenly among the population, I will listen, and even find you some favorable arguments for having a smaller gap between rich and poor: but I will continue to object to having a larger percentage of the GNP go to government. It is the size and power of government that concerns me as much as anything else. I do not want to feed the beast.

More, I do not want to encourage entitlements; I do not think a Republic can survive when those who pay little or no tax determine the size of government and the entitlements to the citizens. I do not want to encourage a society in which all men are paid for existing, and no man must pay for his sins – or for his dinner, for that matter.

I don’t even object to the dole and the creation of a social class that does not work and does not intend to work, which is entirely subsidized by those who do produce – so long as that class forfeits its political control. You will argue that if that happens, those who control the government will not give enough to the non-producers; that only the entitled can determine how much they are entitled to. The counter argument is that only those paying the taxes should be represented when it comes to fixing the taxes; that there needs to be a minimum tax paid before you get to vote on just what the taxpayers will give you.

Well, something must be done about taxation and the whole idea behind it. Taxes may be, as Justice Holmes said, the price we pay for civilized society, but there is a swelling chorus today that civilized society should not cost so much.

What the Left never has grasped is that wealth is created, it does not just appear. When President Obama talks of " the most fortunate among us can afford to pay a little more," he displays his real belief:

Whenever President Obama discusses the wealthy, he refers to them in a manner that assumes they simply fell into piles of money and didn’t have to work for it. They are just “fortunate, ” or “benefitted most from our way of life.”

Rep. Eric Cantor explained the Democrats' basic world view this way to the Wall Street Journal:

"The assumption . . . is that there is some kind of perpetual engine of economic prosperity in America that is going to just continue. And therefore they are able to take from those who create and give to those who don't."

But, as former marketing professor Thomas Stanley pointed out, 80 percent of American millionaires were not born into money. They earned it. Wealth and well being are not resources that can be mined. They are creations. They do not just happen. They are made to happen. As I heard growing up, "money does not grow on trees," although I am convinced that Democrats think it does.

Does Dr. Pournelle have a point that "only those paying the taxes should be represented when it comes to fixing the taxes?" Or is that unacceptably undemocratic? Almost half of American households today have no to negative income-tax liability, meaning that they either pay no taxes at all or show a profit when they fill out their Form 1040.

In 2009, roughly 47% of households, or 71 million, will not owe any federal income tax, according to estimates by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center.

Some in that group will even get additional money from the government because they qualify for refundable tax breaks.

The ranks of those whose major federal tax burdens net out at zero — or less — is on the rise.

In 2007, CBS News was moved to declare that "The Income Tax System is Broken" because then a mere 43 percent of Americans paid no income taxes. The two-year-old figure of 47 percent is probably about 50 percent today. Couple that with the fact that nearing one-third of Americans depend on direct government payments for all or some of their income, including almost 17 percent of Americans receiving what used to be called charity, and half of all Americans receiving some form of government assistance, and we the people have clearly become addicted to the dole.

How long before the golden geese, who make the money that the government takes away to give to someone else, decide to opt out? We are already seeing increasing numbers of doctors refusing to accept Medicaid and Medicare insurance because those programs are no longer covering costs incurred in providing many services and care. How long before the "wealthy" - an extremely elastically-defined standard by this administration - decide that the government and the people in general believe that "The duty of the wealthy is to be robbed by the government"? And they are no longer willing to participate?

Then what?

Finally, if tax "fairness" is the main issue, as Obama has said explicitly that it is, then should not the tax burden fall on pretty much all income groups? Of course, it will never fall equally on all Americans - the people who make more money are always going to pay more, even under a flat tax system.

But why do we disincentivize people from making more money by using a "progressive" tax system? Today we do the opposite. We incentivize people to:

a. forego making more money (meaning that we are keeping net national wealth creation down, which leads to lower tax revenues because of progressive rates)

b. incentivizes tax cheating

c. incentivizes an unreported, underground economy, which is presently estimated to be greater than the defense budget

So lets turn things over and use the tax code to make people want to earn more money instead of less, and stabilize the marginal tax rate. See here, but warning: your head will explode.