Raising Taxes on the Pillars of Society: Is that Your Bright Idea, Genius?

US President Obama is on a roll. After being selected for another 4 year term in the White House, the president is on a crusade to "tax the rich." Except that isn't really what he is doing. The rich will hardly be touched by Obama's compulsive drive to raise taxes. It is the upper middle class who will pay through the nose.

The people whose wallets will be drained in the new war on “the rich” are high-earning, but hardly plutocratic professionals like engineers, doctors, lawyers, small business owners and the like. Once seen as the bastion of the middle class, and exemplars of upward mobility, these people are emerging as the modern day “kulaks,” the affluent peasants ruthlessly targeted by Stalin in the early 1930s.

...The income tax hit may not be the only pain inflicted on these areas in the President’s drive for greater “fairness.” Moves to curb mortgage interest deductions for affluent households also would fall predominately on these same areas.

... For the most part, the economies of the key blue regions are very dependent on the earnings of the mass affluent class, and their spending is critical to overall growth. Singling out the affluent may also reduce the discretionary spending that drives employment in the personal services sector, retail and in such key fields as construction. _Joel Kotkin

In his piece excerpted above, Joel Kotkin is focusing on the destructive impact of Obama's great "pseudo tax the rich" plan on the "Blue States," Obama's strongest supporters. But the destructive impact of Obama's economic policies have fallen on all the states from the time of his first signature on a bill, and the first executive order.

It is not just Obama's "bait and switch" tactic that is so repulsive. It is the malignant nature of his attack against the upper middle class -- the job creating class -- that should be condemned and opposed.

Obama came to the White House with an internalised mission to destroy the heart of his political opposition. To do that, he had to begin dismantling the opportunity society, and the basic personal and economic freedoms from government caprice that were guaranteed by the US Constitution. He has been generally successful, but had he not been re-selected for a second term, many of his more damaging policies could have been either reversed or mitigated. Now, the damage that is being done is likely to have a multi-generational impact.

You could -- as Joel Kotkin does -- refer to this selection of Obama for 4 more years as a "pyrrhic victory" or "suicide pact" on the part of the blue states and Obama's most fanatical followers. But a lot of people suspect that Obama actually cheated -- and that he had a lot of organised help.

Either way, it would be best to get ready for a bumpy ride.