Melanie Phillips Bashes the Rich-Bashing

"When all else fails, soak the rich" seems to have crossed the pond--and makes Ms. Melanie cross:

It is right that those who have more should shoulder more of the burden of paying for the common good than those who have less. But the soak-the-rich brigade totally disregards the fact that such people already do pay hugely more.

Indeed, the top 10 per cent of earners stump up more than half the country’s taxation yield.

One of the more attractive aspects of Mr Cameron has always been his apparently optimistic and sunny disposition. This suggests a benign view of human nature — a belief that, especially if freed from the demoralising grip of the state, people can be relied upon to do the right thing by each other.

That is why it is so disappointing that he appears to be fanning the flames of the politics of resentment in this way.

For the bash-the-rich agenda is based on a profoundly sour view of human nature, a belief that people are basically selfish, greedy and rapacious and have to be controlled (by those who are, of course, unchallengeably good and virtuous and wise, aka the Left.)...

Exactly. It is also a sign of sheer desperation--a "gimmick," as Mark Steyn called Obama's Buffet Rule on the Coren show last night. And as we all learned from Gypsy...

Update: Obama's "fairness" is foul, not fair.