Forbes had a wonderfully scathing expose on Senator Harry Reid’s millionaire tax myths. Senator Reid declared on December 6th,
Millionaire job creators are like unicorns. They’re impossible to find, and they don’t exist… Only a tiny fraction of people making more than a million dollars, probably less than 1 percent, are small business owners. And only a tiny fraction of that tiny fraction are traditional job creators…Most of these businesses are hedge fund managers or wealthy lawyers. They don’t do much hiring and they don’t need tax breaks.”
Thankfully, the good people at Forbes have the sense and sensibility to actually read IRS data and they swiftly came to the unsurprising conclusion that Senator Reid’s assertions are blatantly and patently false:
Millionaire tax filers earn almost a quarter trillion dollars from their businesses. They must hire hundreds of thousands of employees to do so.
and
A 1.9 percent surcharge on millionaires would raise at most eleven billion dollars. By today’s standards, this is chump change, within the federal budget’s rounding error. The millionaire’s tax is not about balancing the budget. It is about gaining political advantage through the use of envy and greed (two of the seven deadly sins).Why would Harry Reid tell such whoppers, which are so easily disproved?
That’s a good question, and unfortunately, we won’t find much of an answer from Senator Reid or the mainstream media. As I have written on this topic before, thanks to Forbes for putting the right information out there. Be sure to read the article in its entirety.