Okay, But Who's Next?

Once one accepts the premise that billionaires are fair game for attack on the grounds that they're greedy and immoral exploiters who didn't honestly earn their money, obliging them to surrender a "fairer share" of their wealth for "public benefit," why would the scapegoating stop with just billionaires?

If too many American billionaires is the problem, what's to be done about all our multi-millionaires and mere millionaires, who presumably also amassed their disproportionate wealth through nefarious means? Bilking just the billionaires will only get us so far, in terms of fattening government coffers and creating a truly "just" society, so millionaires and other people of means must also be called to account. Or so goes the "logic" of the levelers

So if you think the Sanderistas are just coming for the billionaires, think again. Anyone who stirs the mob's ire and envy will be fair game when socialists declare war on "the rich."

Obamaween was a Bust

Well, my Obamaween experiment -- in which I attempted to redistribute the wealth among trick-or-treaters -- didn't go over very well at all.

A couple kids put up a fuss, and a few even cried, when I explained that I had to confiscate some of their candy in order to replenish my own depleted candy bowl, or give it to beggars who had, through no fault of their own, come up short in candy collection. None saw the justice in it; all seemed to think it was patently unfair. And a few even resisted, jumping off the porch and into the bushes in an attempt to escape, forcing me to let the rottweilers out.

I guess these kids aren't old enough and sophisticated enough to see the merit in what I was doing. They see the world in such stark, black and white terms. But a majority of their parents obviously get it, since they are about to elect Barack Obama president, ensuring that this sort of tricking and treating will go on for years to come.

Obamanomics at work in Pitkin County

"Spreading the wealth around" doesn't just occur at the federal level, despite all the focus that redistribution has received in the presidential contest. It takes place at the local level too, as a story in yesterday's Aspen Times makes clear.

Pitkin County commissioners are mulling a six-fold increase in their "affordable housing mitigation fee," according to the paper, which is actually a tax levied on builders -- and the buyers of what they build -- that's used to fund affordable housing projects in the area. It's redistribution of wealth, plain and simple: Some people pay more for a home or building than they need to, so the county can provide other people with subsidized shelter. This creates the illusion that "affordable housing" is increasing, when the net effect is to make building and housing county-wide much more expensive, deepening a "crisis" county leaders are trying to solve.

But this is what can happen when economic illiterates are in charge, and when do-gooder dogma supplants reason in policymaking circles.

As the cost of building these "affordable housing" units has risen -- a consultant hired by the county estimates that “a subsidy of $394,200 is necessary to make a 1,000-square-foot residential affordable housing unit in 2008” -- the tax extracted from builders (and passed on to customers) doesn't go as far. So now the county may raise the tax, possibly by a factor of 6, which will increase the overall cost of housing on most people in the county, while benefiting a minority of folks who win the affordable housing lottery.

If it really wanted to promote affordable housing, Pitkin County would be reducing barriers and costs for builders and developers, which would increase housing stocks and reduce sticker shock. But Pitkin County wants contradictory things: It wants to control "growth" and effectively punish developers, while offering ample affordable housing for its non-wealthy residents.

Until it recognizes the error of its ways -- and realizes that "spreading the wealth around" isn't just unfair, but also counterproductive -- the situation will only get worse.