Obama: “Ignorance, Stupidity or Connivance?”

Walter Williams wrote an interesting article titled “Ignorance, Stupidity or Connivance?”

He noted the absurdity of President Obama wanting to impose a luxury tax on corporate jets as a means to generate revenue to fight federal deficits. As a relevant example of cause and effect, he noted how thousands of jobs related to the yacht industry were lost after Congress imposed a similar yacht tax in 1990. Further, yacht business was significantly outsourced and U.S. revenue was lost vs. the $millions of falsely projected revenue. 

The government’s error is obvious and is essentially the same with every income redistribution effort: its “zero-elasticity vision”; i.e. the belief that price or tax changes do not affect purchasing behavior, especially of the rich. 

But I’m not so sure that Williams did not himself make an error of omission. His final assessment is that Obama "is not stupid enough to believe that a tax on corporate jets would be a revenue generator"; that he simply wants “to inspire envy and resentment against wealthy Americans as a tool in pursuit of his higher-tax agenda.”  

The latter is certainly true, albeit he can accomplish that goal without proposing such a tax. Most Americans, Republicans and Democrats, are unfortunately altruistic enough to accept some forced taking from the rich and giving to the poor. But Obama goes further: his statist ideology causes him to have a more over-reaching goal of broad income redistribution based on his own envy and resentment, multicultural views and the presumed right to usurp individual rights in any way he chooses. He essentially wants to discourage any attempt to gain wealth to become rich. And that hurts the current poor and middle class the most. 

That is where the public draws a line: their altruism does not make them blind to the fact that the economy cannot grow by punishing the most productive among them.

On that score, Obama is “stupid” - and anti-American; and that is what we have to fear.