Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico has a problem with capitalism, which is about as surprising as Dr. Anthony Fauci repeatedly pleading the fifth during Wednesday’s Senate hearing.

During a Tuesday campaign rally, Talarico claimed, “Trickle-down economics is not a theory. It is theft” and that wealthy people “ have been stealing the wealth that we all created. It's why everything sucks right now. It's why people are so angry.”

Trickle-down economics is the theory that policies benefiting the wealthy and businesses, such as tax cuts or deregulation, will ultimately help the broader population. The idea is that increased wealth at the top stimulates investment, job creation, and spending that then "trickles down" to lower-income groups through economic growth.

Whenever a politician or government official accuses capitalists of theft, they are projecting. These arguments are nothing but a way to deflect from the fact that the federal government, along with state and local governments, has been the biggest purveyor of theft in this country.

Where are the capitalists who swipe money from your paycheck every time you get paid? Are corporations constantly increasing the amounts they take from you under threat of punishment if you don’t pay it?

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Which corporations have employed officers to steal people’s property under civil asset forfeiture? Using this practice, law enforcement agencies have raked in at least $82 billion at the federal level and $25 billion at state and local levels since 2000. Through this practice, law enforcement officers can confiscate money, cars, and even homes if they decide it was used in a crime—without due process, an arrest, or conviction. It is quite difficult to regain one’s property after this.

Can Talarico name the corporations that seize people’s homes if they don’t pay arbitrary property taxes? Sure, this can happen if one defaults on a loan they voluntarily signed up for. But who willingly signs up for paying yearly fees for property they own?

I’m not saying corporations are perfect and I won’t claim all wealthy people are as pure as the driven snow. But the notion that it is the wealthy who are making things hard for Americans today. Most of the problems we face can typically be traced to government policy, which is why the state should never have been allowed to grow to a size that allows it to cause these issues in the first place.