I can’t figure out if this is diabolically clever or immensely cynical—or both:
Some of the wealthiest New Yorkers are asking the state to raise their taxes.
Eighty people including George Soros, Steven Rockefeller and Abigail Disney wrote to lawmakers and Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo saying they and other top earners should pay more to support schools, roads, bridges and programs to help poor and homeless residents of the state.
Call me jaded, but I refuse to believe that wily, sophisticated One-Percenters are this moronic. So what’s going on? Are these rich statists banking on the fact that “programs” to “help” the poor actually mire them in deepest poverty? After all, someone has to clean an heiress’s homes and wait on her at dinner.
Or is their ploy for PR, since they know it won’t cost them a dime (“A similar letter last year was largely ignored by lawmakers”)? Maybe they’ve even worked out a deal with Republican legislators of more bribes-sorry, campaign contributions for another year of static rates: “While the Democratic majority in the Assembly has its own plan to increase taxes on millionaires, the Republican-led Senate opposes the idea.”
New York is already “the number one state in the country for income taxes.” Anyone with the least amount of financial sense, let alone these millionaires, would ask what’s become of the trillions lavished on the poor thus far; indeed, New York’s official thieves have redistributed so much income that we shouldn’t have any more poor. Nor did these affluent effluents get rich by throwing good money after bad, squandering their resources on “investments” as wasteful as the State. So only fools would take their silly ruse at face-value.
Obviously, if any of these jokers were serious about assisting “poor and homeless residents of the state,” they could easily do so. Private initiatives for the impoverished abound. What utter poppycock to pretend instead that the heartless and rapacious State is the poor man’s friend!
12:15 pm on March 21, 2017
