TIME magazine, that bastion of socialism and the welfare state, just recently published some amazingly hateful commentary by Michael Kinsley about "private equity pigs". The pigs he is talking about are people who make their living by investing into companies, improving their structure and management and eventually selling them on, benefitting the economy, the shareholders and themselves in the process.

The reason Kinsley is bashing these people is because they are lobbying the U.S. Congress to preserve a tax-code provision that allows them to pay a 15% income tax instead of 35%, because most of their income comes from capital gains.

The reason the private equity people are lobbying to preserve that tax-code provision is because it makes sense. Capital is a necessity for the development of any economy, and it flees very easily. If it is taxed too high in one corner of the world, it will simply flow elsewhere where it is not punished as harshly for doing what it does - which is, making the economy more efficient and more productive.

But that's not how Kinsley sees it. Instead, he refuses to believe that there may be any other motivation for their lobbying other than greed - such as, that they might actually believe in their cause and are trying to prevent the U.S. economy from getting even worse:
But they surely know that their case is not obvious or airtight, and it looks just awful. To be specific, they look like pigs. Worse, they look like unpatriotic ingrates who won't share with their country even a fraction of the blessings that it has bestowed so spectacularly on them.
He insults their contributions that they made to society voluntarily:
They plaster their real names on the walls of institutions dedicated to culture, health and other noble things, all in efforts to sanitize their money.
Who cares how many cultural centers these guys may have financed? Screw them.
Then he calls for them to patriotically pay as much tax as they humanly can:
Like Warren Buffett or Bill Gates Sr., he could be the rich man who speaks the truth to other rich folks about the need to pay their taxes.
Apparently, the reasonable tax rate in Kinsley's world is 100%:
They are trading away something they crave for (respectability) for something they have no conceivable use for (more money).
Maybe Peterson has found a better use for his billions than securing his reputation for vision and honesty. What that could be, I cannot imagine.
Let me rephrase that.

Suppose you donate millions for cultural centers and educational facilities that other people can use. In Kinsley's world, that might be nice, mildly, and it might bring you some half-hearted credit. However, any good deeds you made out of your own free will fade spectacularly if you show any disagreement with the government taking your money away from you forcibly. Because, you know, it isn't you who made your money. No, it's the country that gave it to you:
Worse, they look like unpatriotic ingrates who won't share with their country even a fraction of the blessings that it has bestowed so spectacularly on them.
And by the same token, because the country gave the money to you, it can take it away. At any time. And you cannot resist. In fact, it is unpatriotic to resist. Because it isn't your money. It is the country's money. Get that?

This is communist propaganda at its worst. Why Michael Kinsley is not fired for writing this article, and why the editor of TIME magazine is not fired for allowing it to be published, I cannot tell. But one thing is clear: these "objective" and "respectable" media outlets are being run by morons.