One of the Democrats' main talking points is always about how they plan to tax the rich so the poor "get their fair share," so the rich "pay their fair share." Everything is about "fair share." To every Democrat, that threshold looks different, but, for the most part, they agree that having any kind of wealth is a bad thing. It's why they continually advocate for redistributing the wealth.
Billionaire Michael Bloomberg, however, took a very different approach to the subject. During the International Monetary Fund's 2018 Spring Meeting he actually argued that taxing the poor is a good thing.
"[Some] say, well, 'taxes are regressive.' But in this case, yes they are, that's the good thing about them because the problem is in people that don't have a lot of money," Bloomberg said. "And so higher taxes should have a bigger impact on their behavior and how they deal with themselves."
"So I listen to people saying, 'Oh, we don't want to tax the poor.' Well, we want the poor to live longer so that they can get an education and enjoy life and that's why you do want to do exactly what a lot of people say you don't want to do," he explained. "The question is: do you want to pander to those people or do you want to get them to live longer?"
The former New York City mayor used the example of raising taxes on "full sugary drinks" as a means of getting people to drink less of things, like soda and juice. His justification: these drinks with large amounts of sugar play a major role in obesity and obesity contributes to heart disease and cancer.
But, as our friends at Hot Air pointed out, taxes on Big Gulps don't change people's buying behavior. It just changes where they choose to buy the very product they're after. When Philadelphia passed their 1.5 cents per ounce tax on soda, the amount of soda purchased in the city dropped 51 percent. Sounds great, right? It would, except people went to the suburbs, where the tax didn't exist, to buy their "full sugary drinks." The idiotic legislators in the City of Brotherly Love did nothing but hurt the businesses right in their own city.
Bloomberg continued with another really dumb comparison. Apparently taxing the poor is somehow equivocal to sending hundreds of thousands of troops to war so "they have something to do." Or refusing to get rid of coal mining because coal miners would lose their jobs.
"The comparison is a life or a job or taxes or life? Which do you wanna do?" he asked rhetorically. "Pick your poison."
Taxing the poor and having this elitist attitude is the very reason people hate the wealthy. Bloomberg can sit on his high horse, telling people what's good for them and what's not yet he's never had to worry about having $1 to his name and what he's going to put on the food for dinner for his family. The guy is worth almost $55 billion. An extra dollar here or there isn't a lot but for someone who is struggling to get by, a dollar can make or break a budget.