Wealth envy is alive and well. No surprise there.

The New York State Assembly is churning out some brilliant ideas lately. Just yesterday I told you about their "minimum force" bill that would require law enforcement to shoot suspects in the arm or leg, rather than shooting to kill. Now we have Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver proposing a hike in the millionaires tax. He thinks it will generate $1 billion in revenue. It doesn't matter to Sheldon that the top 1% of income earners already pay 36% of all New York state taxes. That's not good enough for Sheldon Silver, whose millionaire tax would affect some 75,000 New Yorkers. The New York Post explains ... "It's designed to avoid spending cuts sought by Paterson and backed by Cuomo by hiking the state's current 8.97 percent millionaire's tax to 9.97 percent, an 11 percent increase. That would bring the total local tax levy for high-income city residents to 13.618 percent, before federal taxes..."

This little experiment in taxing the high earners is going to end very poorly for New York. A few years ago, Maryland increased taxes on the highest earners in its state. The very next year, one-third of the millionaires had disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. Instead of gaining $100 million in taxes like they expected, their plan backfired and Maryland collected $100 million less in taxes. I have it on good authority that this hike in the millionaire's tax will cost my pal Hannity at least $45.68 more in taxes a year. That could be enough to push him over the edge and move him down there to Naples with me where he belongs.

While we are on the subject, let's go back to New Jersey. That's where Governor Chris Christi had that wonderful exchange with a union government school teacher. When Christie took over, his state was in a heap of trouble (like most states) with a budget hole of nearly $800 million. But guess what? There won't be any tax increases in New Jersey. There won't be any real significant cuts in government services. And now Christie is saying that he is confident he can close the budget gap. Why is that? The first thing Christie did when entering office was freeze the budget. This ended up generating more savings than he expected and was able to cover much of the lost revenue. This should be great news! So the local CBS affiliate goes out onto the streets of New Jersey to discuss this issue with local residents. What do these people in New Jersey want? A millionaires tax. Seriously!

"I'd rather see a tax on millionaires also. It's about time we stopped paying for everyone else," said Lionel Nazco of Carlstadt.

"Taxing the millionaires sounds great. The only concern I have is the millionaires have the ability to take their money and leave," added Anton Tsamas of Hackensack. (Well ... at least Anton has some measure of sense.)

"I don't want to see the service cuts. I want to see the millionaire's tax," said Peter Brehm of Newton.

Unbelievable. I would be my 401(k) that these people voted for the great Community Organizer, the redistributor of wealth, Barack Obama.

Let me stretch this out a bit more ... something more about wealth envy. I've read some studies which indicate that wealth envy really only applies to people who EARN their wealth; not so much to people who inherit it. Why? Because earned wealth is a constant reminder to those who have NOT earned wealth of their own - as they see it - deficiencies. They hate being reminded of what they might have done if they had worked smarter, harder and longer.