Here’s one solution to America’s economic woes: Tax the living daylights out of Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
This Internet billionaire told me he is ready, willing and able to hand over his fair share to a Barack Obama-led redistribution of the wealth.
“They are going to take money from really rich people and give that money to people who used to have it and don’t have it anymore,” Schmidt said in an interview Wednesday. “You can call that what you want, but that’s what they are doing.”
Forbes lists Schmidt as the 59th-richest American, with a net worth of $5.9 billion.
It’s not quite the $16 billion fortunes that Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page each possess, but Schmidt is up there. And if paying taxes is truly an act of patriotism, he is by far the most patriotic man I have ever interviewed.
Obama’s stated plan is cut and dried, said Schmidt. Anyone who makes less than $250,000 a year gets a tax cut. Anyone who makes more gets a tax hike.
John McCain’s people continually argue Obama will raise taxes on everyone, no matter what it says on his website, because that’s just what liberal, socialist, possibly communist, associate-with-terrorists, rumored-to-be-Muslim guys like to do.
Schmidt, on the other hand, takes Obama at his word.
“If you fundamentally believe that Obama is lying to you — and I think that’s the assertion — you are not going to vote for him anyway,” he said.
Schmidt said he knows exactly what he’s in for, and he’s biting the Obama bullet.
“I face a tax increase, and many other people face a tax decrease, and I think that’s a good outcome for America.”
To be fair, Obama’s plan is no more socialist than the schemes President Bush and crew have already marshaled, using hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to bail out private industries, from banks and insurance companies to automakers.
I wake up each morning thinking it was all just a bad dream. A capitalist society would never do this. Yet Republicans and Democrats alike have been redistributing wealth, from the taxpayers to the private corporations, at an unprecedented clip.
A few billion here, a few billion there . . .
“Do you have any idea how much money that is?” Schmidt marveled. “People have trouble with these numbers because they are so large. They are larger than the numbers that Google deals with.”
And it looks like these bailouts may keep coming until they reach a googolplex.
But the problem, as Schmidt sees it, is also too much money in too few hands. These bailouts are designed to get credit markets moving again. But the only way to get the economy going is to get middle-class consumers spending again. And the best way to do that is to give them more money via tax policy.
“The gap between the wealthiest Americans and the middle class is unconscionable,” Schmidt said. “You can decide it’s OK to be like Mexico or Russia, where a small number of people control all of the assets, but this is not part of the American dream.”
Schmidt wants to see roads and bridges repaired, electrical grids and broadband systems upgraded, and schools and universities vastly improved so that the students they produce can compete in a global arena.
“These are all things that have all languished over the past few years,” he said, “and it is the proper role of government to invest in them.”
Many middle-class Americans do not like the idea of sticking it to the rich. That’s why Joe the Plumber has become an instant icon this election season.
Joe dreams of buying out his boss’ plumbing business one day, and he doesn’t want to face a confiscatory tax policy when he does.
But someone’s got to pay for all the bailouts. Someone’s got to pay for all the infrastructure we’ve worn away. Who better than the guys who’ve been making a killing these past eight years?
A vote for Obama is a vote to tax them all, and Schmidt, too.
“It is a tax increase for the economic winners in the Bush administration,” he said, “and that’s why they are complaining.”
Al Lewis: 201-938-5266 or al.lewis@dowjones.com
