Fairness? Whatever does he mean?

Here's Obama discussing some points on the issue of fairness. Let's focus on his statement that everyone should pay their fair share.

The government spends over 3 trillion dollars each year.  There are about 300 million Americans.  Doing the math, the government spends approximately 10,000 dollars per capita.  Could you not say that the fair thing to do would be to send a bill to every American for 10,000 so that the government can be funded?  No, there are many who could not afford that.  A family of four would not be expected to pay 40,000 dollars on taxes each year.  There are many households in this country where the income isn't even that much.  To expect them to pay such high rates would be confiscatory.  Nobody would favor that.  But it isn't a matter of fairness.

Taxes are set up on the ability to pay, not on the basis of fairness.  The "rich" pay more because they are able, not because it is fair.  For instance, how is it fair to pay nothing at all even if you benefit as much from that 10000 in spending as the richest person in the country?  Or, to put it another way, how is just paying nothing at all "fair" when you benefit from that spending?

The only way it can be deemed fair to force the "rich" to pay more than those who are not is to say that somehow the "rich" did something "unfair" in order to get their money.  Therefore, they must be punished in order to set things right.  What the president seems to be giving voice to is the notion that there is some injustice being done by the rich to the rest of us.  Therefore, the need for "fairness" in the tax code.

This sets up the notion that income must be redistributed.  It is all a zero sum game.  Whatever the rich have gotten has come at the expense of everyone else, so it is justice to take that unlawful booty away from them and give it to the rest of us.  It denies that wealth is created.  If wealth is created, who creates it?  Why nobody creates it.  It cannot exist.  Whatever is good must have been taken from something else and the rewards must be distributed fairly.  Wealth has been taken from the poor, or it has been taken from the earth, or it has been taken from the rest of the world's population.  Wealth itself cannot exist apart from others.  Therefore, it cannot exist, because it is already there.  That's what makes it a zero sum game.

This must be the logical conclusion from the president's remarks.  There's no wealth creation.  That's because if there is, somebody must be creating it.  Then it would be much harder to argue for the redistribution of it because it invariably means that you have to take it away from those who create it and give it to others.  This is not justice, it is coercion, it is theft.  Theft is unjust.

Update:

Pursuing the thought a bit more, I posed a question and submitted to a google search- does wealth exist?

The results didn't satisfy me much, as nobody seemed to get the point. Wealth is not money, per se.  It is the relative availability of goods, at least that is how I see it.   But this is an interesting essay- Does Wealth Exist in a Vacuum?


Wealth doesn't exist in a vacuum, in my opinion.  But the collective cannot create it.  It is an individual process.  The collective can magnify its significance, but the creative process cannot exist apart from an individual.  That's paraphrasing Ayn Rand, by the way.


Or to paraphrase Ronald Reagan- we are not ants on an ant hill.  We are separate and distinct from each other.  Each person has his/her own gifts and each person utilizes those gifts with more or less effectiveness.  Equality cannot mean sameness, because we are not the same.  Equality can only mean equality of opportunity- anything else produces a monstrosity like the Soviet Union.

Update:

Here's another problem that I see with the Occupy manner of thinking.  Just because someone is a member of a certain group, such as the 1%, doesn't make them guilty of anything.  Nor does membership in a group, such as the 99%, make anyone a victim of anything.  Guilt or innocence is determined in relation to individuals with respect to specific acts.  Merely judging one simply because of one's being a member of a group isn't valid, rather, it is highly prejudicial thinking.  It should be the very thing that those who claim to be liberal would be the most against.  It is the same as saying that being a member of a certain racial or religious group are somehow less worthy than another.

There can't be any concept of group guilt in a civil society.