At a recent fundraiser for California Senator Barbara Boxer, New York Senator and former First Lady (and possible future Vice President) Hillary Clinton publicly displayed a glimpse of her Socialist core by alerting the more-than-willing crowd that they might have to lose some of the tax cuts passed by President Bush if Democrats wind up winning the White House and control of Congress.

"Many of you are well enough off that ... the tax cuts may have helped you," Sen. Clinton told several hundred supporters, who spent as much as $10,000 to attend. "We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."

Isn’t it nice how some people are so charitable with other people’s money? Aside from sounding like Hitler, Clinton’s advocacy of flawed Marxist wealth redistribution flies in the face of the successful free-market economics that have made the United States the most powerful nation in history.

Free markets lead to innovation, innovation leads to opportunity, and opportunity leads to the highest standard of living on the planet. “Poor” in America is not the same thing as “poor” in other countries. In a country where the government uses your tax dollars to pay farmers not to grow food, is it any wonder that thieves steal TV’s instead of TV dinners?

The only people who can receive the dreaded tax cuts are those who are paying taxes in the first place. And because a relatively small percentage of the population (“the rich”) pays a huge proportion of the taxes to begin with, any tax cut could be labeled a “tax cut for the rich.” This isn’t cold, callous greed. It’s simple math. Due to adjusted tax laws, the tax rate at which “the rich” are taxed is higher than the rate at which the “non-rich” are taxed. There is also a much-overlooked difference between income and wealth. While tax rates affect people based on what they earn, tax rates do not affect what people already own. It’s no wonder, then, that people like Ted Kennedy don’t mind higher taxes. They already have money, and really don’t need to earn more.

It’s sad, but a truly limited government seems like a laughable pipe dream. Most of the things that our government does, it does badly and expensively; taking away resources from what it should be doing, like keeping terrorists from killing us. Since Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, our government leaders have taken it upon themselves to expand an ever-growing safety net. Every administration since FDR (both Republican and Democrat) has expanded existing programs and added new ones, making itself bigger and endlessly taxing us in a quest for more power. Americans now pay more in taxes (both upfront and hidden) than we do for food, clothing, and shelter combined. And it keeps getting worse.

For America to really “get back on track,” we need to remember the words of Ayn Rand:

“America’s abundance was created not by public sacrifices to ‘the common good,’ but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes. They did not starve the people to pay for America’s industrialization. They gave the people better jobs, higher wages and cheaper goods with every new machine they invented, with every scientific discovery or technological advance—and thus the whole country was moving forward and profiting, not suffering, every step of the way.”