With taxes continually rising for the wealthy, there is more and more debate about whether to continue the system we have implemented in the Obama administration to tax the wealthy more and tax the poor less.

The argument can be made that it’s not fair that the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer. My response to that is that not everything in life is fair and equal. If we all wanted to be equal on an economic standpoint, our country would be  socialists. Why should people who work really hard to earn what they earn have to pay amounts near or above 40% of their income to the government, while others who are not working as hard have to pay half of that percentage to the government? Now of course, these percentages change on a per person basis, but the gap keeps getting wider and wider between the percentage the “rich” are paying the percentage the “poor” are paying.

My view is that everybody has an opportunity in this world. Of course, some have an advantage providing them a wider window of opportunity, but everybody nonetheless has an opportunity. It’s not right for people who take their opportunity and make something of them to support people who don’t take their opportunities seriously, or don’t take their opportunities in general.

We are a capitalistic society. We believe in having separate economic classes while having equal rights and freedoms. Why is the percentage of your income that goes towards taxes be outrageously different than say, your next door neighbor who earns a fourth of what you earn and may be in a different economic class. Raising the percentage of taxation towards the rich is punishing people for their success.

Another important thing to consider is the point that the more money you feed to the government, the more money there is for the government to waste. In other words, if we provided the government with less money through our taxes, they would be forced to be a lot more careful with how they spend the money. Enough is enough when it comes to wasteful spending. We need to stop feeding the government money to invest in things like the “Bridge to Nowhere” (which it took a lot of debate to finally say “no” to).

Now I’m not proposing we significantly raise the taxes for the poor and significantly lower the taxes for the rich, but what I am proposing here is that there be much less of a gap between what me and my next-door neighbor are paying in taxes percentage wise based of our annual income. And that’s my point of view on taxing the wealthy.