Taxing wealth is the next logical step

[mainer]

121. These are the threads that make me wonder: who ARE the people on DU?

Don, you've had some great threads. For the most part, I've agreed with you.

But sometimes, DUers have topics that totally drive me off the cliff.

I am totally a social liberal. Gay rights, atheism, freedom of the press, I'm there.
Obama, I'm there.
Higher taxes, I'm there.

But then we get to wealth confiscation and I'm thinking: who ARE you people? Why do you want to take my hard-earned money, earned through no trick of banking or fiscal manipulations, money that I earned through my own talents and hard work and years of acquired skills? Money that I didn't spend on jewelry or fancy clothes or cars, money that I saved because at heart I'm a cheap Yankee? Money that I earned because I got an advanced degree, despite the fact I'm the daughter of an immigrant and a father with a blue collar job?

Why do you think I should be taxed on my savings?

You have this idea that anyone who's successful must have gamed the system. Let me tell you, some of us played by the rules. Many of us are Democrats. Many of us are happy to pay our taxes. I have, for the past decade, paid the maximum income tax rate and was happy to do so. I've contributed to every liberal cause.

But then I come across people on this thread who say they want to take my retirement savings because it happens to add up to more than THEIRS, and that seems to be the only reason why they say so.

And they call me Mr. Moneybags because I protest. They want my farmland confiscated. They denigrate my years of labor as something that was due to, I don't know ... pure luck? The fact they assume I'm a white male? (When I'm neither male nor white.)

These are the things that really confound me on DU. Because I thought DU wasn't about confiscation.

Yet it seems it is.