Is the bloom off Elizabeth Warren (D-Occupy)?

The senatorial incarnation of President Obama’s Spread the Wealth reelection effort is Elizabeth Warren, running against Scott Brown in Massachusetts. A new poll has her way behind, though perhaps it is an outlier (via HuffPo):

Recall Warren’s famous class-warfare rant:

There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there — good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory… Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea — God Bless! Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

Just saw a great response to this over at FreeEnterprise.com:

Facilities, services, and functions like infrastructure, education, and national defense are what economists call “public goods.” It’s true that they help create a platform upon which individuals can build, create, and achieve. But are they responsible for people’s success? Absolutely not.

If that were true, then why isn’t everyone successful and wealthy? Public goods are available to everyone and benefit everyone. No one can reap an exclusive return from them. So why do some people succeed and others don’t? Did Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, or Mark Zuckerberg succeed because the government maintains roads between their homes and offices, supports public schools with an average 30% dropout rate, or funds scholarships to the universities that these innovators famously dropped out of? I don’t think so.

It’s generous of Warren to permit risk takers to keep “a hunk” of what they’ve earned through their blood, sweat, and tears. In Warren’s world, government makes all success possible and is therefore entitled to reap everything that individuals sow.

And a few factoids that Warren may be unaware of:

— The top 1 percent pay 36.7 percent of federal income taxes and earn 16.9 percent of adjusted gross income (as of 2009).

—  The top 0.1 percent pay 17.1 percent of taxes and earn 7.8 percent of adjusted gross income.

—  The average income tax rate for the top 1 percent is 24 percent. The bottom 50 percent? Just 1.85 percent.

— The bottom 50 percent pay just 2.3 percent of income taxes.