Elizabeth Warren, Fisked

As most of us know, Harvard Professor Elizabeth Warren gave a campaign talk in which she said the owners of factors need to be "paying forward" a hunk of their profits for the next person who comes along.♠  (I am not sure who that next kid is and what he is going to come along to do.  Build the next factory?)

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own.  Nobody.  You built a factory out there — good for you!

But I want to be clear.  You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate.  You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.  You didn’t have to worry that maurauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.  Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea — God bless. Keep a big hunk of it.

But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

She may not have meant to make it sound like class warfare, but it sort of did.  You factory owner, sitting out there in your factory, should give us money because we protect you and keep you safe and allow your goods to go to market.

I am sure this formulation of why companies pay taxes makes sense to many, but to me it was just plain tone deaf.  And so it was to the Instapundit.  Here is what the Instapundit put up.  A slightly different view of the situation.

As for me, I see companies, and really, their owners, paying corporate taxes out of one or more of four big pots of money:

1. Money inherited from one's parents.  This money may well have been taxed already, but one has put it back to work, like the good servant,♥ and it has shown additional profit.
2. Money given to you by investors, who would like to have profit on their money, like any good servant.
3. Money you have taken from me through the prices you have put on your goods or services.  It was my decision to purchase your Brand X rather than Brand Y.
4. Pixie Dust.

I think Ms Warren believes that there is Pixie Dust out there to pay the additional taxes she seems to be proposing.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  From The National Review On Line.
♥  Mt 25:14-28.