Multi-kazillionaire Warren Buffett this week renewed his annual plea for government to soak the middle class. He didn’t put it in quite those words. What he said was that he wanted Congress to raise income taxes on multi-kazillionaires like himself because he isn’t paying his fair share – and he is willing. The left loves to trot out such noble and self-sacrificial-sounding sentiments from the super-rich. But it is not a formula for soaking the rich: it is a formula for soaking the working man – and Warren Buffett knows it. Let me tell you why.
For the truly rich their income is merely their surplus, the fat on the meat of their holdings. Their substance is in their personal property and investment instruments. For the working man his income IS his substance, the only meat he has on his bones. So the proper translation of a plea like Warren Buffett’s is: I’ll be glad to give up a nice chunk of the fat in my holdings if you will take a big bite out of the meat of the poor working slob. This has several benefits for Buffett. Besides making him sound oh-so-noble, it also reduces the number of Average Joes who can become rich and the number of rich who can become super-rich. Holds down the competition, you see. Buffett is a master at playing the markets – and has come up with a pretty good gambit for playing the dull-witted press and the folksies, too. If he gets his wish, surprise, Buffett will continue to get richer while everyone not in his league has to struggle harder.
Here’s a proposition to call Buffett’s bluff. Let’s enact an onerous personal property tax on all estates exceeding $2,000,000. Let’s make sure to include Swiss Bank Accounts and corporate holdings in our definitions of personal property. Let’s make it so onerous that we can totally exempt from taxation any property below the $2 million line and any annual income below the $2 million line. Now there’s a proposition that would gouge the meat off old Warren’s bones while leaving the Average Joe – and the mere Upwardly Mobile Joe alone. You can bet Buffett would scream like a stuck hog if Congress actually got around to doing to him what he is forever encouraging it to do to everyone else.
While we’re at it, let’s pop the left-wing myth that we are an under taxed nation when compared to other industrial western nations. There’s a rhetorical shell-game going on there, too. Usually when someone starts opining about how under taxed we are they compare our national taxes with other nation’s national taxes. They almost always omit the fact that we are taxed at more different levels than any nation in the world. In addition to national taxes we have state taxes, county taxes, township taxes and school taxes, just to name a few. When you count up all the taxes we actually have to pay, regardless of source, we are in the middle of western industrialized nations. This is still not evidence that we are under taxed: almost invariably the countries that do tax heavier than we do have economies that can’t produce jobs. They are overtaxed. If we want to triple or quadruple our unemployment rate we could be just like them. However much that would lower Warren Buffett’s payroll costs, I’ll pass on it.
Actually I do not support such an onerous personal property tax. I will be happy if we simply enact legislation imposing it on any super-rich twit who, with faux nobility, proposes sticking it to the rest of us

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Charlie Johnson is a grassroots conservative, former radio talk show host, regular columnist for The Chicago Daily Observer and serves on its editorial board.