Last Friday, President Barack Obama spoke in Roanoke, Va. In less than two minutes, the president gave new meaning to the upcoming presidential election.

Specifically, a vote for Obama is a vote for collectivism, and a vote for Romney is a vote for the individual. The segment of the Roanoke speech in question began with Obama’s usual proclamation regarding the deficit problem.

Obama said he would reduce the deficit by having the wealthy “pay a little bit more.” Next, the president maligned all successful individuals.

As a justification for hiking taxes on the rich, the president said, “I’m always struck by people who think, ‘Well, (my success) must be because I was just so smart…because I worked harder than everybody else.’”

Specifically, the president said, “If you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own…somebody along the line gave you some help…somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that allowed you to thrive…somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made it happen.”

The Daily Orange will publish 117 issues during this academic year and maintain a circulation of 9,000 copies, but by Obama’s logic, no one working at The Daily Orange deserves credit for this success, despite the intelligence and hard work required—rather, “someone else” outside of The Daily Orange deserves credit.

It seems the president seeks to demonize successful business owners so that no one feels bad when we take more money from the successful for no reason, and he seeks to get votes by turning big earners into a common enemy only his re-election can stop.

Specifically, Obama claims the successful are not giving back what they owe to society and must be made to do so, but this notion is false. The successful already give back more than they owe because our federal tax law is progressive, meaning as one’s earnings increase, the percentage taxed from these earnings increases.

As a consequence, if roads, bridges and other public services are truly the only reason some individuals rise above others, the rich have already paid for most of their own success and everyone else’s—even the success of those who are not rich—because the rich foot most of the public sector bill.

For instance, in 2009, the top 1 percent of earners took in 16.9 percent of all income but contributed 36.7 percent of federal income tax dollars, and the top 10 percent of income earners made 43.2 percent of all income but paid 70.5 percent of the federal income tax.

Further, the total effective federal tax rate in terms of income—a figure that accounts for the income tax, payroll tax, capital gains tax and the rest—only increases as earnings increase. For instance, in 2005, the lowest quintile paid an effective 4.3 percent of its income to the federal government, the second quintile paid 9.9 percent, the middle quintile paid 14.2 percent, the fourth quintile paid 17.4 percent and the highest quintile paid 25.5 percent.

So, despite Obama’s frequent claims that the successful are not doing “their fair share,” federal tax figures show the opposite is true. Regarding Obama’s collectivist claim, a vote for Mitt Romney would reflect a belief that those who work—or who have worked—at The Daily Orange are solely responsible for the paper’s success, for example, and this is an attitude our next president must hold to enable future creative and profitable endeavor.

Michael Stikkel is a junior computer engineering major. His column appears online weekly. He can be reached at mcstikke@syr.edu.

Published on July 20, 2012 at 2:28 pm