It’s so popular to tax the rich…. oh they’ve got all that money, they can afford it. Maybe they can afford it, but it doesn’t mean they’re any different from you or I and don’t like it.

And so, it seems the practice of milking and abusing those that have for the sake of those that haven’t earned it is coming back to bite ’em in the ass. The rich are leaving New York.

“You heard the mantra, ‘Tax the rich, tax the rich,”’ Paterson said Wednesday at a gathering of newspaper editors at an Associated Press event in Syracuse. “We’ve done that. We’ve probably lost jobs and driven people out of the state.”

[…]

[New York Lt. Gov. Richard] Ravitch said last year’s surcharge on income taxes for the next three years won’t likely meet budget expectations. He said Albany must look to politically difficult spending cuts, rather than more taxes, to meet a deepening shortfall that Paterson estimated Wednesday could reach $3 billion.

“I don’t think they have any choice,”  Ravitch said. “In my personal opinion, we’re at the outer limits of the elasticity of our tax system.”

Wow. Politically difficult spending cuts… as opposed to the really easy and popular tax increases, especially if I’m not the one being taxed, right? Always good when people aim low.

Just amazing. The implied mindset is we can keep forcefully taking what isn’t ours from some people (as long as it’s not me) so we can pay for whatever we want. And that we can just keep doing it with no consequence…. the party will never end, and if we want more, we’ll just forcefully take more.

And now, it falls apart.

And now, they may not be able to afford everything and may have to make cuts, like any responsible household would have to consider. I’ll bet most of the stuff they want to afford the government shouldn’t be dealing with anyway.

Some taxation may be necessary to pay for those Constitutionally outlined tasks, but we’ve all got a breaking point. Abuse things and eventually you lose things.