Envy - Bill Whittle

Tradition says there are seven deadly sins, and I want to talk about number six.

Envy.

Think you’re immune to envy? Try this little thought experiment with me.

Let’s say you work for a large company, and you’re just one of a hundred cubicles on a massive office floor. And one day the company CEO and the Chief Financial Officer come to your cube and say, “Dave, can we have a word?”

“Dave, we’re here because we’ve seen all of the hard work you’ve put into the company, your attention to detail, your scrupulous honesty, and your willingness to go the extra mile for our customers. And Dave… as a token of our gratitude, we wanted to give you this check for two hundred thousand dollars – we already paid the taxes on it. No strings, no joke – it’s all yours. “

Then they smile, hand you a check for two hundred grand, and they leave.

You’re filled with instant, radiant joy. It’s nothing but pure gain – it’s an utter windfall! Your mind races with all of the things you’ll be able to do with the money. You can pay off the house, or put the kids through college, or sail around the world, or whatever!

And in your joy, you go to share this windfall with your fellow coworkers… only, you discover that the same CEO made the same speech and gave every single other person on the floor a check… and their checks were for FIVE hundred thousand dollars, not two.

Then what happens? You’re no longer filled with joy, are you? You are filled with envy. You no longer think about what you could do with two hundred thousand tax-free dollars. You only think about what you could have done with five hundred thousand dollars. You start wondering why Jim, who drinks, got more than you when you know that he’s a lush, he’s just going to blow it all on booze. And Susie comes in late every day and leaves early, while you’ve been busting your butt for twenty years. She gets five hundred grand while you get a measly two? How is that fair?

And if the deal was structured so that either everyone took the money, or no one got the money… well, I assure you there are people out there – not everyone, but a few -- who would rather tear up two hundred thousand dollars of pure gain simply because the idea of other people having more is so repulsive to them.

We call these people Progressives. Today, these same Progressives – led by Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and especially Barack Obama – have, in a desperate attempt to hold onto the power that people like them have always craved, launched the kind of class war the likes of which we have never seen in this country… but we have seen in places like China and the Soviet Union: rich, fat-cats, one-percenters, vampires and hoarders, parasites who take everything they can and who refuse to pay their fair share.

Their fair share.

In 2009, the top 1% of Americans paid 36% of all Federal income tax. The top five percent paid almost 60%. And the richest quarter of America pay almost 90%.

Meanwhile, the bottom half of America pays… two percent. That’s according to the IRS.

When we stand in line at the supermarket on the Fourth of July, getting our barbeque supplies, we’re all equal. We all pay the same sales tax. We don’t get to look into the wallet of the purse of the person ahead of us to see if they have more money than we do, and if they do, make them pay for some of our groceries… and likewise, we don’t have to worry about the person behind us having less money than us, and then lifting some of our hard-earned cash.

No one is morally better or worse than anyone else in that grocery line. But as soon as they step out into Obama’s America, some of us are evil, greedy, rich fat-cats who don’t pay our fair share, and others of us are honest, decent, hardworking Americans, entitled to help from the government.

How can we know who is good and who is evil? Well, millionaires and billionaires – not to mention all corporations – well, they’re inherently evil… unless of course they are called Goldman Sachs, or General Electric, or Warren Buffet, or Jeff Immelt – you know, companies or millionaires that donate to the Obama campaign. Those are the good kind of corporation or rich person.

The bad kind of rich person is a one-percenter. Now here in America, that top 1% mark is about $344,000 a year. According to loving Progressives, if you make $343,999 you’re safe – for now – in the 99%. But if you make two bucks more than that -- $344,001 -- well, now you’re a 1%er and you’re evil.

Why do we put up with this? Why do we put up with this un-American idea that if you make a certain amount of money you’re morally okay, but a little more than that and you’re suddenly not? Why don’t we all pay the same percentage… as if we were – you know – equal. Morally equal.

To those who say that the rich should pay more, I would reply that someone paying 17%, say, of one million dollars is paying more than 17% of someone making ten thousand dollars. It’s a hundred times more.

And I know this makes me a NAZI – even though NAZI means National Socialist and I hate socialism! – but I think the poor need to pay the same rate as well. Today, half of the country pays no income tax at all. That’s not fair. In fact, that’s absurd. Even people getting welfare ought to have 17% deducted from those benefits, so that when those people vote to raise taxes it’s coming out of their pockets, too. Everybody has skin in the game that way. If we had people starving on the streets of America I might feel differently about this, but when the number one health concern for poor Americans is obesity I say we can all afford to be in this together.

Get rid of the progressive income tax and we’re all equal. No loopholes, no tax attorneys, no thousand-page tax code – all gone. What did you make? Multiply that times point one seven – or whatever – and send it in. Thank you.

Not only would the economy explode with the kind of growth that Progressives could never imagine... We’d be equal again, and we’d be free again. We’d get number six if not out of our souls then at least out of our government. In exchange we’d have prosperity, freedom, equality and real fairness. Of course, that would also be the end of the Democratic party. See, there’s your problem, right there.

If we don’t, if we let this continue – this demonizing of the successful-- then one day, as we sit around our barely-heated, government-issued apartments, eating our sustainable algae cakes as we watch the Chinese land on the moon, we can hold up a coin with Barack Obama’s profile on one side, and the new American motto for the Brave New World of change: EX UNO PLURES.

Out of one, many. Oh, and the coin will helpfully list, on the reverse side, the criteria for which of us are good and which are evil based on the latest income data.