The Wealthy in America Know What They Have To Do
by James Glaser
April 2, 2009

United States Senator Judd Gregg, Barack Obama's first choice to be Secretary of Commerce said this about President Obama's spending spree:

"If you take all the debt of our country, run up by all of our presidents from George Washington through George W. Bush, the total debt over all those 200-plus years since we started as a nation, it is President Obama's plan to double that debt in just the first five years that he is in office."

After looking at President Obama's plans for America, Senator Gregg decided to stay in the Senate.

Judd Gregg of New Hampshire also says President Barack Obama's massive budget proposal will bankrupt the country.
Gregg says he has no regrets in withdrawing his nomination to become commerce secretary. He pulled out after deciding he could not fully back the administration's economic policies.
The senator said Obama's spending plan in the midst of a prolonged recession would leave the next generation with a country too expensive to live in.

Senator Gregg is not the only American to worry about what President Obama's spending is going to do to our country. America's wealthy families are looking hard at what they are going to have to pay for Obama's largeness.

Who pays taxes in America now? The Fair Tax Blog puts it this way:

• The top 50% of income earners pay a whopping 96.5% of federal income taxes, while the lower 50% pay just 3.5%.
  
• The top 25% pay 83.88% of federal income taxes
  
• The top 10% pay 65.8% (these are people with an adjusted cross income of about $95,000 or higher)
  
• The top 5% pay 54.4%
  
• The top 1% pay 34.3% (these are people with an adjusted gross income of about $300,000 or higher)

I don't know where you think the cut off level is for "wealthy," but I feel safe in saying the top 1% are in the wealthy sector of America. Right now those people are paying 34.3% of the tax bill, and these people know Barack Obama is looking at hitting them up for even more.

Sure, some of those people are in that top 1% of money makers in America because they inherited it, but most of them earned their money with hard work. No matter how they got their money, either work or inheritance, these people can see the hand-writing on the wall. They know that Obama is going after a larger slice of their income, and they are not going to stick around, at least their investments are not going to stick around so it can be tapped.

Wealthy people are wealthy because they watch and guard their income. They look at what America is doing, and all they can see is higher taxes in the future. These people know how to play the game, and they are going to take their ball (money) and go home (away).

What does this all mean? It means when our generation steals money from the next couple of generations, the really wealthy families in America are not going to stick around to pay off this huge debt. Oh, they might still live here in America, but they are going to get around any increase in taxes that they can.

That means taking their money out of the United States. That means they won't be investing here, that also means they won't be spending here. At least not spending like they do now.

As my neighbor in the Art Park says, "somebody better hip Obama to what he is doing to our country." They better, because like them or not, the United States needs every American to invest in our country if we want to get out of the hole we are in. The wealthy know that neither they nor our country can spend our way to prosperity. Somebody better "hip" Obama to that, too.

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