Your ‘fair share’

It’s her class warfare card. She plays it every day. 

Hillary Clinton tells us she will pay for free college and expanded Social Security and everything else by making sure Americans who earn the most income pay even more than what they are already paying in federal income taxes.

Clinton says she is going to make sure “they pay their fair share.” What’s more, she is appalled that Donald Trump complied with the federal tax code in the 1990s and therefore qualified not to owe federal income taxes. (Never mind all of the sales taxes, property taxes, excise taxes and payroll taxes his companies paid. Clinton eschews any mention of that.)

But we digress. 

Clinton’s mantra of “fair share” always prompts the questions: What is a “fair share?” And who will be the impartial, all-knowing, benevolent, fair-minded judge and jury to decide what “fair” is? Clinton? A Democratic Congress? A Republican Congress? The Supreme Court?

“Fair” is like art — it’s in the eye of the beholder, although most of us know it when we see and feel it. But in Clinton’s eyes, what decades of Democratic and Republican congresses and presidents have created is unfair. Those who earn the most are not paying enough. 

But judge for yourself (see box).