Just Asking

By Thomas Sowell May 19, 2015 6:47 am


In a recent panel discussion on poverty at Georgetown University, President Barack Obama gave another demonstration of his mastery of rhetoric -- and disregard of reality.

One of the ways of fighting poverty, he proposed, was to "ask from society's lottery winners" that they make a "modest investment" in government programs to help the poor.

Since free speech is guaranteed to everyone by the First Amendment to the Constitution, there is nothing to prevent anybody from asking anything from anybody else. But the federal government does not just "ask" for money. It takes the money it wants in taxes, usually before the people who have earned it see their paychecks.

Despite pious rhetoric on the left about "asking" the more fortunate for more money, the government does not "ask" anything. It seizes what it wants by force. If you don't pay up, it can take not only your paycheck, it can seize your bank account, put a lien on your home and/or put you in federal prison.

So please don't insult our intelligence by talking piously about "asking."

And please don't call the government's pouring trillions of tax dollars down a bottomless pit "investment." Remember the soaring words from Barack Obama, in his early days in the White House, about "investing in the industries of the future"? After Solyndra and other companies in which he "invested" the taxpayers' money went bankrupt, we haven't heard those soaring words so much.

Then there are those who produced the wealth that politicians want to grab. In Obama's rhetoric, these producers are called "society's lottery winners."

http://www.gopusa.com/commentary/2015/05/19/just-asking/

 

By the way calling the wealthy lottery winners comes from the attitude Marxism instills.

 

Obama's reference to the lottery was not the literal lottery. It was a euphemism in reference to his belief that the rich only got rich because they were lucky. He is trying to take away from the idea that the rich are rich because they worked hard to get there. It is a Marxist ideology that allows Marxists to feel more comfortable demonizing the rich to justify their wealth redistribution.