Tax hilarity

Megan McArdle has a post on the possible dangers of raising taxes on the rich, which results in this typically hilarious comment from poster "blighter":

Wow, this post falls prey to so many obviously faulty assumptions that it could provide a useful case study in how to shill for the parasitic plutocracy while pretending to hold sensible, sane views.

I unfortunately have other plans that I have to get to tonight or I'd take the time to fully deconstruct it. Maybe I'll find the time later for a fuller comment.

For now, though, let me just point out the most obviously faulty assumption underlying this post: that the 'rich' engage in 'productive activity' which they might abandon in favor of the greedy deceptions necessary to subvert a properly just, progressive tax regime.

Unless you count engineering and then delighting in the misery of the downtrodden as "productive", it is almost literally the case that the rich engage in no productive activity whatsoever. Rather, they simply create ever new & more devious ways to gather the riches of the world -- riches that rightly belong to everyone equally -- into their own grasping hands. The vanishingly few progressive rich folk aside (Soros & Gore spring to mind as exemplars), we could take every last penny of the venal villainous rich folks' money and suffer no significant adverse effects whatsoever. These mythical 'costs' that the bought & paid-for apologists for the wealthy dream up to vainly argue against the sane, sensible, compassionate & caring boldly redistributive tax system that the people of this country desperately need are only so many self-serving fairy-tales.

So if we finally institute a socially-just, truly-equitable tax regime, the rich would 'stop their productive activity', eh? There's an empty threat if ever I've heard one. How would we be able to even tell that they'd stopped? Probably because we'd notice the drop in human suffering as their vile attentions were diverted to guarding their ill-gotten lucre.

Besides, the obvious answer to concerns about the rich hiding their hoarded fortunes is simply better enforcement of tax law. Remember: there's nothing the government can't do if it puts its mind to it. People who claim government action is constrained by decreasing marginal returns or dis-economies to scale or even simple over-extension of scarce oversight & management resources are clearly beholden to a radical anti-government view of the world that blinds them to the veritably infinite possibilities of a fully-engaged, technocratically-planned, progressive government.

You claim we can't always raise more money through ever more punitive taxes on the indolent wealthy? Yes we can!

He really needs his own blog.

Update: In case it wasn't already apparent, blighter's comment is meant as very clever sarcasm.