Who is rich?

Trump's new declared tax plan has sent out ripples of reaction throughout the media, mainstream and not. Some say that he goes too far. Many say he does not go far enough. Everyone seems to have a different opinion on the specifics of the plan. Memorably, several scattered sources have claimed that the mortgage interest deduction currently causes rich people who pay the AMT to buy larger homes (and people being able to afford larger homes is a problem, for some reason). Others have claimed that some lower-middle class families may pay as much as $100 per year in additional taxes as a result of this "horrible and regressive" plan. (They were notably silent when Obamacare premiums rose by an average of about 25% this year.)

I have seen a theme repeated, though, among rank-and-file commenters on various news sources, that troubles me, because it is linked to a problematic underlying philosophy. They say that this plan is all well and good, but this tweak or that tweak needs to be made to ensure that the rich pay their fair share. Usually in debunking this argument, conservatives and libertarians lean on words like "pay" (does the government have the right to take the money?), "fair" (a higher percentage of their income? A higher percentage of the taxes?), or "share" (What do people owe society as tribute for the shame of being wealthy?). I would like to focus, instead, on the word "Rich".

Terry Pratchett was an economic and political genius, and we are all sadder for his loss. In one of his early books, Guards Guards, he described the mindset of a group of laborers coming together under the leadership of a man who hoped to rule the city by terrorizing it with a dragon that he needed their help to summon.

The Supreme Grand Master listened to this with a slightly lightheaded feeling. It was as if he’d known that there were such things as avalanches, but had never dreamed when he dropped the little snowball on top of the mountain that it could lead to such astonishing results. He was hardly having to egg them on at all.

“I bet a king’d have something to say about landlords,” said Brother Plasterer.
“And he’d outlaw people with showy coaches,” said Brother Watchtower. “Probably bought with stolen money, too, I reckon.”
“I think,” said the Supreme Grand Master, tweaking things a little, “that a wise king would only, as it were, outlaw showy coaches for the undeserving.”
There was a thoughtful pause in the conversation as the assembled Brethren mentally divided the universe into the deserving and the undeserving, and put themselves on the appropriate side.

 This little mental exercise is undergone by each and every person who argues that "the rich" need to pay "their fair share". They celebrate tax cuts for "the middle class", of course, people making only [insert their own income here], but the "really rich people" need to continue to pay more. The definition of "really rich people" differs wildly by example, but it always represents a margin north of the commenter's own income.

If there's one takeaway I'd like my readers to get from this post, it is this, and I'll put it in boldface so that it sticks out despite being probably about halfway through my 'essay' by the time I'm done: You do not want someone else deciding what constitutes "wealth" for the purpose of government confiscation and redistribution of wealth.

This is actually a lesson that I first tried to give people when Obama was running for office in 2008, and many moderates took his speeches about how "the rich need to pay their share" and "we need to have a global mindset" in this exact same way: they mentally divided the universe into the deserving and the undeserving, and put themselves on the appropriate side. All the while, I was trying to pound away, to get people to listen and understand that, on a global perspective, even the poorest people who aren't even on welfare, even the homeless people on the street with no ID, no income, and no government social programs, are wealthy.

When the working-class started seeing their costs rise and their benefits decrease under Obama, I already knew it was coming. They fussed and fretted and felt betrayed, but I had already anticipated this move. The universe had been divided by the people with the power to make the changes, and these folks were not on the side where they expected to be.

The people now talking about the "rich paying their fair share" are mostly speaking against the total removal of the AMT. Don't remove it completely, they say. Just shift it up a bit. A bit further. You know, far enough so that I'm not "rich" anymore. What they miss is that this was the original intent and purpose of the AMT, which at first only targeted about 155 families, but which now reaches well into the middle class.

So let me remind 'my people'... 'ah, my people'... that the average American household in poverty has a large enough home that it would be considered 'wealthy' in most of Western Europe. You could halve the food stamp allotment to the poorest families and they'd still have more to eat than most people in the world. In fact, even in the country with the highest median income per household in the world (Norway, according to Gallup), that income is less than $52K/year... and some people claiming both that we need to keep the AMT and they shouldn't be paying it were claiming a household income in the $70-150K range.

Ditch the AMT. What with the removal of all these tax breaks, Trump would be practically enacting it on everyone anyways. Let the rich have their break. You have your break. Don't be so eager to define whether someone else has "too much" money, "too big" house, "too many" vacations, "too fancy" clothing.

Rest assured that someone else is doing it to you.