Cartoonist Recommends Sending America's Richest Kids to Fight Its Wars

I couldn't resist the above title when Scott Adams finished his blog post with the line:

[Note: The best way to quote me out of context is something along the lines of “Cartoonist recommends increasing taxes on the poor!”]

What got my ire up? Adams is incensed that the bottom 51% don't pay any income tax. (I guess he's OK with them paying viciously regressive payroll taxes, but he really feels that since they don't pay any "income" tax then they don't have any "skin in the game". With that logic, then if the US exempts capital gains from taxes, the ultra-rich will have no "skin in the game".)

Here's the key bit from Scott Adams' post:

We all understand that no entity can survive for long if it gives away its resources while asking nothing in return. And this leads me to my point: In the United States, 51% of adults pay zero federal income tax, and yet they have the right to vote. That’s the very definition of a system that can’t last.

I’m not sure where the tipping point is. So far, the power of the non-tax-paying majority has been blunted by the influence of political parties and the misdirection of the media. If the majority ever figures out that they can legally confiscate the wealth of the minority, tax rates will double overnight. My best guess is that the United States will go into a death spiral at about the point that 55% of adults pay no federal income taxes. We’ll probably get to that point as baby boomers continue to retire in large numbers.

I say we "up the ante" in this game of "skin in the game"...

The rich don't send their kids to die in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's shocking because it means they are getting something for nothing and as Scott Adams knows, that's a system that is about to blow up in your face. So the Scott Adams solution:

Draft the young, men and women, rich and old, and force them to have "skin in the game" so that their loyalty and commitment to America is up front and obvious.

That what Scott Adams really means when he talks taxes. Taxes are for wimps. If you want to talk real "skin in the game" it is dead bodies in boxes coming back from your foreign wars. So Scott Adams is asking for the top 1% of Americans to pitch in and deliver up their children to be cannon fodder for America's endless wars.

Here's Adams pleading his cause:

My recommendation for putting a safeguard on the state of the union is that every adult citizen should pay federal income taxes, even if it is just one dollar per year. For the benefit of the country, it is important to blur the line between rich and poor.

It is odd to see Scott Adams to get so wound up over dollars when the real currency of patriotism is blood. I'm sure Scott Adams, as a patriot, served in the military and he has his children signed up in ROTC or ready to swear into the military as soon as they hit 18. Right? Funny... I see in his Wikipedia page that he was an office worker and cartoonist, but somehow they've overlooked his hitch in the military when he was a grunt carrying a rifle ready to lay his life down whenever his country called for him to run and fill the breach when danger arose. A patriot like Adams wouldn't have shirked his military duty, right? Especially since he has time to complain about the poor -- who serve disproportionately in the military -- aren't carrying their fair "burden" in tax dollars. Adams knows that blood is an infinitely greater sacrifice than dollars, and the poor are bleeding for their country. Bleeding disproportionately.