“And let’s close the loopholes that lead to inequality by allowing the top one percent to avoid paying taxes on their accumulated wealth…”  President Barack Obama, State of the Union Address, January 20, 2015

That statement just about sums up Barack Obama’s entire political philosophy. Wealthy capitalists hire accountants and lawyers lobby the government to create ways for them to legally cheat the government out of tax proceeds — proceeds rightly given to other citizens — which is, of course, unfair in that it creates inequality. The conceit simple: money (capitalism) is rigged; even the government is cheated, and by association, so are you.

The fallacy, of course, is that the achievers (capitalists) fund the vast majority of taxes and much of government funding is just plain borrowed (deficits and the debt). The beneficiaries of this fictional claim on the capitalist purse pay little in the way of income taxes and pay withholding taxes, the whole of which are insufficient to cover current program disbursements. The so-called loopholes are not created in a vacuum. They are voted into law by the legislature and either signed into law by the president or allowed to become law by omission.