(Akiit.com) “Tax the rich,” they say. “The wealthiest one percent will pay for it,” they boast. “It won’t hurt if (insert billionaire name here) can’t have caviar at his dinner party in order for (insert Leftist utopian program here) to save the planet.” After all, who doesn’t want to save the planet, right?
Is there anyone worse at math than Leftists? And, what does this have to do with cows?
I set out to write an article on the pipe dreams of the Left that are always “funded” by the notion that they can just “tax the rich.” It is a fool’s errand, however, to prove Leftists can’t do math by, well, using math. After all, if they could comprehend math, they wouldn’t keep proposing these absurd plans.
Just for fun, though, I’ll throw in some math so that my readers know I’m capable. Let’s start with a word problem. If you are a fan of Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, just skip this part and go to “the Story of the Cows.”
Problem #1
Country A — let’s just call it the USA for fun — has a small population of super rich people. They are the top one percent. Combined, they own 40 percent of the USA’s wealth. Let’s call them the Opressors. They have really cool stuff, but no one else gets to have their stuff. So, some leaders in the USA come up with a plan. Let’s call these guys the Doogooders, or DGs for short.
The DGs think that the country would be better off if it built a giant umbrella made of UV resistant fabric to shade the USA during the hot summer months, making all of the country’s citizens more comfortable. They argue that by building the umbrella, the cost of air conditioning would go down and, in the end, save citizens of the USA lots of money, making them happier and more productive.
The DGs also suggest that taking some stuff from the Oppressors in order to get the giant umbrella will make life better for everyone else in the end.
Now, the project will cost an estimated $93,000,000,000,000 over a ten-year period. If the Opressors own 40 percent of the nation’s wealth and the total value of the nation’s wealth is $150,000,000,000,000, can the USA build a giant umbrella? Assume that the funding is collected at the beginning of the umbrella project.
If you learned math via Common Core, you will have to group everything in fives before subdividing by 13. Next, multiply by apples and finally divide by lemons. Or, if you are normal and learned math the right way, you can just eliminate the zeroes.
$150 X 40 percent = $60. This is the money available if 100 percent of all wealth is taken from the Oppressors at the beginning of the project. $60 < $93. Adding back the zeroes, the umbrella project is short $33 trillion, even if “the richest one percent” had 100 percent of their wealth confiscated. In summary, the project could not be funded even if all of the Oppressors’ wealth was used.
Problem #2
The 2019 annual budget for the USA is $4.407 trillion. If the total net worth of every billionaire in the country is 2.5 trillion dollars, how long would it take to deplete their wealth if 100 percent of it was confiscated and used to run the government?
Answer: 4.407 trillion divided by 365 days is roughly .0120739 trillion per day. Drop the “trillion” and 2.5 divided by 0120739 is 207.05819 days. 207.05819 days divided by an average of 30 days a month is roughly 6.9 months. That means the money would run out by July 17th. Taxing the “rich,” or even completely confiscating their wealth, does not fund the government for much more than half a year.
The government is not a creator of wealth. It is a taker. And a socialist government wants to take it all. In the above example, once the wealth of all 540 billionaires in the USA is squandered, there is no more. No Amazon, Microsoft, Berkshire Hathaway, Google, Facebook, Koch Industries, Walmart, Nike, Dell, Mars Candy, Apple, Disney, Tesla, Estee Lauder, Ebay, Uber, Menards, Home Depot, Cabelas, Bass Pro, Fed Ex, Cargill (food). The list goes on. That’s just a small fraction of the top 100. All would be gone. Essentially every major industry from food to banking to computers to transportation to sports and entertainment would be wiped out.
That’s how socialism works when you actually do the math. The result is the same whether it’s healthcare, Cash for Clunkers, Shovel Ready Jobs, or the New Green Deal. The math just doesn’t add up, which is why Leftists from use fear and envy to attack their enemies, not facts. This why they should be stopped at all costs.
And then there are cows.
The Story of the Cows
This story has purposefully been reduced to the simplicity of a children’s book so that socialists like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez might have a chance at comprehending it….might.
In a great country called the USA, there were cows, thousands and thousands of cows. Farmers owned the cows and the cows gave milk. People drank the milk. For hundreds of years, the farmers milked cows and sold the milk to the people. There was milk for everyone. Everyone was happy. Farmers made money and bought more cows. Lots of farmers owned lots of cows. Everyone liked the cows except Leftists. Leftists weren’t happy people. They hated the cows. They hated the farmers even more. They liked milk and drank milk, but they had no idea how it got there. They didn’t like cows and farmers. They didn’t like that the farmer had lots of cows and they didn’t have any.
So, one day the Leftists ganged up against the farmer and convinced the people that the farmer had too many cows. They claimed that it wasn’t right for someone to own so many cows while others had none. They took the cows from the farmer and kept them for themselves and their friends. There was one big problem. The Leftists didn’t know how to milk cows. They found out that raising cows and milking them was hard work. Soon, there was a shortage of milk. Since there wasn’t much milk, they convinced the people that there would be more food if they killed the cows and ate them. After a short time, there were no more cows. The people starved and died. The end.
And this, my friends. is why socialists can’t have nice things. They can’t do math and know nothing about cows.
Columnist; Steve Sheldon