A ‘rich hunt’ would not dent the debt

Linda R. Caterine, Henderson

Friday, Feb. 24, 2012 | 2:01 a.m.

What is this obsession with hunting down the rich and taxing their tails off?

George P. Dix put a lot of thought into his letter to the editor, “Tax the rich who spend uninhibited,” identifying just which automobiles, homes, boats, airplanes and pleasure trips should be targeted. He suggested that our police officers, who have nothing else to do, track down these expensive cars, get the owners’ names and turn them over to the tax department.

Is this where we are headed now? Besides being disturbingly “Big Brother-ish,” this approach would do nothing more than satisfy our class envy.

The real culprit here is a massively bloated government bureaucracy that is addicted to spending. Our federal government was never meant to do all of the things it tries to do now. Consequently, it usually does a horrible job. And we want to give it more money? Taxing the rich is a joke. If you confiscated all of the money from every millionaire in the country, it would only be a drop in the ocean toward reducing the deficit, let alone any of the debt.

We need total tax reform, a flat tax, or to get rid of personal income tax entirely and go with a national sales tax. Since the greedy, self-indulgent rich like to buy lots of expensive things, they would end up paying their fair share. This would eliminate the need for turning people in to the IRS and we could all get back to minding our own business.