By Steve Huntley | John Kass News
You’ll be reading this on a tablet, smart phone, laptop or desktop computer. Pause for a moment to consider the wonder and magic of these devices.
They and the software already embedded in them, or added to meet your needs, do so much: Written, voice and video communications, and those available on a global scale. Encyclopedia-like sources of information. Entertainment, music and movies. Instantaneous complex calculations. Electronic credit card payments. Help to do your taxes. GPS-based travel instructions. Photographic and video memories of your life. And many more functions that you could add.
And the devices are wealth creators, generating jobs to make, market and distribute these remarkable products and inspiring new jobs and commerce in new businesses made possible by the digital revolution.
Yes, there are downsides such as obsessive screen time, the poison of social media, especially for children, and fears about AI. But no one would give up these devices that have so transformed and enriched our lives.
And they have more directly enriched their inventors, making some people fabulously wealthy, the most successful of them billionaires.
Some of the names behind the digital revolution are familiar. Like the late Steve Jobs, the genius of Apple. Michael Dell of the eponymous Dell Technologies. Bill Gates of Microsoft. Elon Musk, a trailblazer in internet, electric car and space ventures. Jeff Bezos who made tens of millions of us turn from the shopping mall to e-commerce. Mark Zuckerberg, a pioneer in social media. There are many other names you can add to this list of those who have enriched our lives and thereby made themselves fabulously wealthy.
Not among the names of those responsible for our wondrous modern lifestyle: Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Or any of the other advocates of special taxes on the “rich.”
They are not inventors like those who gave us the smart phone. They are not creators like those who saw these amazing devices and thought up Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter or other social media platforms. They are not far-sighted investors who saw new ways to make money in the digital world, such as through Amazon, PayPal, Ebay and the like.
No, Sanders, AOC, Mamdani, Warren and their like can only come up with ways to pick the pocket of those who have prospered from their creative imaginations. These politicians and activists have more in common with thieves, parasites and leeches than they do with the inventive, visionary and original minds behind the technologically advanced world we live in today.
The feeble imaginations of these rabble-rousing politicians can only feed on envy, can only come up with new tax schemes. And those machinations, for all the high-minded words pushing them, have but one aim: to expand the reach of government and make as many people as possible dependent on government. That of course increases the power of the politicians pushing the schemes. Sanders and Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna of California are proposing a new wealth tax on billionaires.
Unleash Prosperity, a free-market advocacy organization, counts eight states that “already have or are considering raising income or wealth taxes.”
Illinois Democrats are pushing a constitutional amendment for 3 percent tax on anyone making more than $1 million a year. That would hit far more than billionaires, ever increasing the tax burden of doing business in Illinois for enterprises large and small. The good news is that Democrat leaders in the Legislature don’t have the votes to get it on the ballot this year. The bad news is that they aren’t giving up and will try to get it on the ballot for the 2028 election.
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