False logic of the social contract

Elizabeth Warren says...

“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 marauding 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.”

Sounds good, but is it right?

the rest of us paid for

Didn't the factory builder also pay taxes to build those roads? Educate those people? Pay the salaries of police and firefighters?

The presumption is that factory builders are taking unfair advantage of others when in fact they are risking their own capital. We should be encouraging this, but they want to penalize this and it is class warfare no matter how well you disguise it. Is it any wonder the economy is in the dumps with idiots like this in charge?

Those factory builders have to compete with other factory builders for customers (unless the government picks winners and losers using stolen tax money to do it.)

All Lizzy is doing is justifying theft by using envy. Pure and simple.

You don't have to believe that business people are saints, but it's much worse to demonize them and use that demagoguery to get people supporting this idiocy. The demons are the crony capitalists working with these politicians.

Even if you agree that the 'rich' need to be taxed more, knowing it will do nothing regarding out of control spending... when does it end? Everybody is being taxed too much to support out of control spending. How do you like paying payroll taxes that will never provide social security down the road? Isn't that a road we've all paid for?

Update: Now over at Rand and Goldberg and PJM Tatler.