The Impracticality of the Robin Hood Tax Theory

Robin Hood was a classic tale, and has made for two good movies (neither one of which featured Kevin Costner, but one did feature an animated fox and the other was a Mel Brooks classic).

It was actually a great rail against big Government, if you think about it. Prince John was taxing the people to death, and Robin Hood and his band of merry men faught valiantly to get the money out of the Prince's coffers and back in the hands of the people, where it belonged.

Realistically speaking, Robin Hood was a libertarian...you keep what you earn, and Government should keep it's hands off your money.

However, the Democrats have a tendency to attempt to do this in a somewhat reverse fashion...where Government plays the role of Robin Hood, and anyone who is even moderately successful is automatically placed (for the sake of winning votes and playing class warfare) in the unenviable role Prince John.

Why is it that taxing the hell out of a person's success is supposed to be a good thing? Robin Hood did not give someone else's tax money to a poorer citizen in the interest of fairness...he attempted to give back to the people what had been taken from them...nothing more, nothing less.

Honestly, I never have been able to understand this...even in my more liberal days (when I was 10 or 11 years old), I just never understood why taxing those who make more just to "redistribute" the wealth was a good thing. I always thought, even when I was young, that such policies generally discourage people from being as successful as they can be. Why strive to make more only to have Government take it away?

So...if Obama wins and the Dems get their supposed "Supermajority", I'll be sure to be a good American citizen (in their eyes) and never strive to make more than an average wage and work an average job...just so I don't arouse suspicion. :) :) :)

OK, all jokes aside, I know that many of my leftist friends will tell me that things are "much more complicated than that" and we need to uplift the downtrodden and spread the wealth around, because nobody should have a bigger piece of pie.

Hey, I get it, I understand the concept. In a philosophical sense, it sounds nice on the surface. However, to reduce voluntary (and more efficient) charity with forced Government intervention? Why? We're already the most charitable nation on Earth.

What's interesting is that many Democrats and American Liberals like to believe that their way of thinking is much of "intellectual" in nature, and most modern-day intellectuals believe that Big Government and centralized planning are the answer.

However, I simply economically identify with Classical Liberals (who would be labeled conservatives or libertarians in today's American society) such as John Locke, Voltaire, Montesquieu, or Alexis de Tocqueville? I mean, their writings only played a integral part in shaping our nation. They're also only names that you read about in any history class as being influential to American economic and social thought.

Anyone care to argue that those people aren't "intellectuals"?