Bill Whittle: Michael Moore's Right

Ace: Bill Whittle: "Michael Moore's Right: We Can Balance the Budget By Taking Money From The Rich.   Ah, but there's a catch. Great video; stay with it." Allahpundit: Long, but it has to be.

First came the video by Mary Katherine Ham's analysis of Michael Moore's simple, elegant solution to America's financial crisis.

 The reviews above concern Bill Whittle's visual illustration of a more detailed Iowahawk blog post on Moore's Madison speech ON VIDEO. Iowahawk is a genius. Bill Whittle, a screenwriter, provides the images to make his words memorable.

One thing you have to say about Michael Moore is that he is effective in persuading and energizing his intended audience. Since Moore declared war on the government of Wisconsin, Governor Walker's poll numbers have been going down, and now the Left is engaging in a deceitful and intimidating campaign to unseat a supreme court judge in Wisconsin. (They are also going door-to-door for signatures on recall petitions, while misrepresenting the language of the petitions.)

There are powerful psychological reasons for the allure of liberal social policies even in the face of economic disaster.   Mark Steyn characterizes two very different types of protesters in the London protests and riots against modest cuts in government benefits, in The Human Right to Suspend Reality, then makes the following observation:

In a democracy, there are not many easy ways back from insane levels of “social” spending, and certainly not when the leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition panders to the mob by comparing them to anti-apartheid activists.

Michael Moore is apparently proud of his recent appearance on the Colbert Report.   Note, starting at about 6 minutes and 30 seconds how viciously and falsely he characterizes America's 400 billionaires, from Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to the "littler Mubaraks" like Oprah Winfrey.  Who could really believe that Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey are conspiring to concentrate ALL of the money in the United States into the hands of exactly 400 people?  But it's the emotion that counts -- no evidence needed.

I am in no position to judge the deepest intentions of America's billionaires, but I would imagine that not all of their motives are altruistic.  However, the leadership of the Left proclaims that it knows EXACTLY what  "the rich" are thinking.   Might this be a form of projection?  The Left tends to think of money as power more than classical liberals, libertarians or conservatives do.

The leadership of the Left knows that its primary weapon is to demonize some person or group on the other side. "Personalize and Polarize", as Saul Alinsky liked to say. It is impossible for them to portray those on the other side as having ANY honorable motives. Their worldview REQUIRES them to attribute evil motives to others, because the record of the left's economic policies has been consistently disastrous (given enough time).

Questions for Michael Moore:   If these 400 billionaires are conspiring to control ALL of the wealth in the United States, WHY DO MANY OF THEM GIVE AWAY SO MUCH OF THEIR MONEY TO CHARITY?  And why do they have so many employees?  And to whom do they sell products or services?  What is the true nature of their wealth?

Compare Moore's economic philosophy with that of Abraham Lincoln.

I don’t believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good. So while we do not propose any war upon capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else. …. I want every man to have the chance — and I believe a black man is entitled to it — in which he can better his condition — when he may look forward and hope to be a hired laborer this year and the next, work for himself afterward, and finally to hire men to work for him! That is the true system.

p.s.:   While taxes for corporations are not fairly distributed in the U.S., tomorrow the United States will have the worlds highest corporate tax rate. Not only that, but no country leans on upper-income households more than the U.S. for tax revenues. And then there's this little bit of fact to counter Mr. Moore's scary scenario of total control of America's assets by 400 very rich people:

I like to point out that the low rate at the top of the income scale is an artifact of the lower capital gain rate, that it doesn't count the double taxation of corporate income, and the fact that people usually get to the very top of the income scale once, when they sell their business or some other big asset in capital gain transactions.

In other words, most rich people reach high, temporary income levels by giving up control of the businesses or stocks which made them rich. There is, over a period of decades, a fair amount of turnover in the richest families in America. But Michael Moore will present only the worst possible characterization of "the rich" because it is part of his strategy.

Meg McArdle via Instapundit: THE RICH REALLY ARE DIFFERENT: Their Incomes Fluctuate More. “This is one of the reasons that we can’t fix all our budget problems with higher taxes on the rich – if we do that, revenues are going to collapse dangerously every time there’s a recession.” McArdle quotes Robert Frank:

Nearly half of California's income taxes before the recession came from the top 1% of earners: households that took in more than $490,000 a year. High earners, it turns out, have especially volatile incomes--their earnings fell by more than twice as much as the rest of the population's during the recession. When they crashed, they took California's finances down with them.

Mr. Williams, a former economic forecaster for the state, spent more than a decade warning state leaders about California's over-dependence on the rich. "We created a revenue cliff," he said. "We built a large part of our government on the state's most unstable income group."

As far as I can tell, if Michael Moore had his way, there would be no risky investments because there would be no rich people. Only people toiling happily under the direction of the Federal Government (or the Revolutionary Council or whatever), which would magically provide good jobs, good wages and benefits to all of the 300 million people in America. It would be a Worker's Paradise. Sort of like Cuba. THE POSSIBILITY OF BILLIONAIRES TAKING ALL YOUR MONEY WOULD VANISH.