Leftist fundamentalism is loudly, quite arrogantly boasted these days, probably louder than ever before. Progressives are now publicly claiming things like “The first thing I will do when I get to Washington is ‘roll back’ the tax cuts,” or “We’ll have to pass the bill [Obamacare] so that you can find out what is in it.” Recently, left-wing billionaire Michael Bloomberg alluded to this nuance of unashamed progressivism by admitting on video how much he enjoys raising taxes on poor people.
Bloomberg has personally funded and promoted all kinds of regressive taxes and regulations in New York City in an attempt to control people. All this has been accomplished by using the coercive power of the government to force people to live their lives as he believes should happen.
In April, at an event hosted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), he appeared on stage with IMF managing director Christine Lagarde, another one of the world’s bureaucrats. Bloomberg referred to low income individuals as “those people” and then takes a shot at coal miners and the U.S. military, with an arrogant, bullying worldview.
Bloomberg said:
“Some people 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. 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.
The question is do you want to pander to those people? Or do you want to get them to live longer? There’s just no question. If you raise taxes on full sugary drinks, for example, they will drink less and there’s just no question that full sugar drinks are one of the major contributors to obesity and obesity is one of the major contributors to heart disease and cancer and a variety of other things.
So, it’s like saying, ‘I don’t want to stop using coal because coal miners will go out of work, will lose their jobs.’ We have a lot of soldiers in the United States in the US Army, but we don’t want to go start a war just to give them something to do and that’s exactly what you’re saying when you say ‘well, let’s keep coal killing people because we don’t want coal miners to lose their jobs.’ The truth of the matter is that there aren’t very many coal miners left anyways and we can find other things for them to do. But the comparison is: a life or a job. Or, taxes or life? Which do you want to do? Take your poison.”
Lagarde responded:
“So its regressive, it is good. There are lots of tax experts in the room. And fiscal experts, and I’m very pleased that they hear you say that. And they all say that two things in life which are absolutely certain. One is death, the other one is tax. So you use one to defer the other one.”
Bloomberg replied:
“That’s correct. That is exactly right. Well said.”
All of this was met with thunderous applause.
Bloomberg has bankrolled numerous highly unpopular policies across the U.S. In a report from Americans For Tax Reform, he has attempted to raise the cost of everyday groceries in places like Chicago, New Mexico, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. through higher beverage taxes. Soda taxes do not work; they never do. They are regressive and extremely disliked across the political spectrum, and result in low income people having less money in their pockets.
For example, the Bloomberg-sponsored soda tax on Chicago residents was so reviled that it was overwhelmingly repealed. In 2017, Santa Fe, New Mexico, a city which supported Hillary Clinton by over 70 percent, resoundingly rejected – with nearly two-thirds of the vote – the same type of soda tax that Bloomberg is pushing all over the country.
