Jews in America are also among the highest per-capita earners. Why? Again, anti-Semitism may be a factor. This has led American Jews toward entrepreneurship and professional careers that allow them to develop talents that shield them from bosses who don't like Jews. There is also a cultural reason: Jews revere education. Many become doctors and lawyers. But this dynamic has had a toxic side-effect: it has generated anti-Semitism and slurs in the past. In any case, Jews are being surpassed by Asian-Americans, including Indian-Americans, so maybe that will recede as a problem (it already has, because Americans, despite the bleating of liberals, are among the least prejudiced people in the world).
But what won't recede is the wave of higher tax rates targeting higher-income Americans. David Drucker writes in the
New York Post:
High-income people will lose many of their tax cuts under the Democrats' plan: they'll lose a large fraction of their itemized deductions including charitable gifts and mortgage interest. Their tax rate on qualified dividends and long-term capital gains will go from 15% to 20%, and the top two wage tax rates will return to 36% and 39.6% from their current levels of 33% and 35%.
Jews will get hit with multiple whammies on New Year's Day.
Higher taxes on income will be just one of them (and since many still live in New York, they will face an even worse hangover, since New York taxes are confiscatory). But higher taxes on capital gains will bring its own pain to many Jews because of a demographic fact: Jews are the
oldest ethnic group in America.
Older people have often relied on the health of the stock market to cushion their retirement years. That cushion has deflated this year under the multiple blows administered by Barack Obama and the Democrats. (Much of last year's growth was due to the Federal Reserve running its printing presses overtime -- the only government branch that worked overtime last year; also, the market was just vastly oversold in the panic of 2008.) As Democrat policies took hold (the failed stimulus, ObamaCare, financial "reform"), the market started to tank because investors saw a bleak future for free enterprise in the Age of Obama. Obama's penchant for railing against Wall Street -- historically, an anti-Semitic rallying cry -- may strike the wrong chord with American Jews. Didn't the
self-declared student of history who absurdly
claimed that "nobody has spoken out more fiercely on that issue of anti-Semitism than I have" attend any of his history classes (or did he play hooky, as he claimed to during all those days that Jeremiah Wright broadcast his jeremiads against whites, America, and Israel?).
Also, American Jews have far fewer children on average than most groups in America. Children are expensive, but they also have historically been seen as a form of insurance by people: the kids will be there to help seniors. But if people have fewer kids, they not only have the ability to save more money (again, kids are expensive), but also must save more money to help themselves during their sunset years.
The stock market stall, combined with vastly increased taxes on capital gains and dividend income, bode ill for America's oldest "tribe": Jews.
Since I mentioned ObamaCare, one can ask, how will that impact American Jews? Not well. As noted above, many Jews are doctors. The healing arts are revered among Jews ("my son, the doctor"). ObamaCare will suppress the freedom of doctors, load them up with additional paperwork and patients, and will eventually hit their bottom line.
Furthermore, seniors are very c
oncerned about the future of health care in America, as they should be. How welcome will be the gutting of Medicare and Medicare Advantage to fund health care for legions of younger people who can opt in and out of government-funded medical care whenever it suits them (for example, in the ambulance on the way to the hospital)? Not very -- and that includes the oldest demographic sliver in America: Jews.
These are just a few reasons why American Jews might be open to moving to the other side of the aisle. Others include a massive change in the Jewish population from the influx of Russian Jews, who abhor statist control of the economy and of their daily lives, and who revere liberty as only those who never had it before would. There has also been a surge in the Orthodox community -- and they have far more children than Reform Jews, so the Jewish population as a whole is moving inexorably more towards conservatism. They also tend -- as is true of religious Christians -- toward the redder end of the political spectrum. Simplistically and myopically blaming Obama's approach toward Israel for the "defection" of American Jews from the Democratic Party short-changes Jews and is wrong. The single-minded obsession that Jews focus only on Israel runs the risk of encouraging charges of dual loyalty, and that has led to a great deal of suffering for Jews throughout history.
And while all of the imam's writings and interviews are now being thoroughly examined, many critics have overlooked one of his more memorable speeches. The imam actually eulogized Daniel Pearl, the journalist murdered by Islamist terrorists in Pakistan, and, Diane, he asked forgiveness for what's been done in the name of Islam.
Islam, we have a problem. Another problem that is. 
