I have read and heard various numbers that anywhere from 35% to 60% of eligible taxpayers pay NO Federal Income Tax. When I discussed this with one of my more progressive friends and queried why the Republicans weren't making a big deal out of this, he said something that "blew my mind" ( sorry for the '60s jargon). The Republicans don't want to bring this issue up because so many of their constituents ( i.e. Tea Party type people) are among those who pay no,or very little, Federal Income Tax.
They think they are overburdened with Federal Income Taxes, but in reality they are not . If it were brought to their attention that they don't really pay very much Federal Income Taxes, Republicans might lose a lot of their most active and vocal base. The top 5% percent pay 60% of the Federal Income Taxes, but I'm guessing that a whole lot of those folks at Tea Party rallies are not in that top 5%.
Now let's be clear about this. I'm only talking about Federal Income Taxes; not Social Security Taxes ( which hopefully people will get back at least the money they paid) or Medicare Taxes ( which most people will use in the future to pay medical costs).
Of those who pay Federal Income Taxes, the top 10% of income earners pay over 72% of the taxes and the bottom 50% pay less than 3% of taxes paid.
Both parties really don't want people to hear too much about these figures. You almost never see articles or prominent stories about this in the mainstream or fringe media.
The Democrats, of course, believe the rich are under taxed and the middle class is overburdened, and facts like this are very inconvenient. Why is it , according to the Democrats apparently ,that only people making less than $250,000 come from hard working, tax paying, families? Are the rest just free loaders? The numbers don't bear that out; but those higher earners don't have as many votes.
The Republicans want to keep as many people as they can "riled up" about how they are overtaxed, so they can get elected. Whipping up the top 5% just won't bring out much of a crowd. Therefore it helps the Republicans to perpetuate the illusion that we are all overburdened with Federal Income Taxes.
Neither party care much about the facts.
Eric
Recently a major newspaper article referred to a 19th Century economist
ReplyDeletethat pointed out that societies, as they become advanced, want more services
from government: military, police, educational, medical, infrastructure as
in roads and water and sewers and wiring, and libraries, museums, and so on.
The issue for our system, is not whether we want more services, but how to
equitably pay for those services through taxation.
Our representative democracy presumably was set up for this sort of dilemma,
by not requiring each of us individually to make those decisions. Good
things, say the Ravinia Festival, may not appeal to certain individuals for
selfish reasons. I prefer the Festival to be one or two suburbs away,
without its attendant traffic and detritus. In Switzerland, direct
democratic vote leads to unstatesmenlike decisions, as the Swiss population
was unwilling to directly approve reparations for World War II victims
because each person could calculate exactly what it was going to cost them.
Enter stage right/stage left, your choice, our current legislative problem
with funding, discussing, or valuing any desirable need/want. We do not
have statesmen, we have Lilliputians, and my apologies to the little people.
Bandying around sobriquets like entitlements, demagogic phrases like tax and
spend, are scare tactics against any responsible discussion. Perhaps a law
to make it a felony to accuse a politician of wanting to raise taxes to
balance a budget.
The wonder of a blog...is to take a far-out postulation and begin the
discussion to see if it goes anywhere."
Marc
You continued to ignore the widening disparity in wealth -- it is all about wealth disparity, as the Gracchi would have told you.
ReplyDeleteRJ
Your observations are excellent, Eric. It highlights to me how the real tax burden is on the upper middle class. They get squeezed the most, considering that 45% of the Federal Income Taxes paid by the upper middle class goes to the Department of Defense Government Contractor Welfare Program. What is left of their disposable income must pay for the ever-escalating costs of their children's education and health insurance premiums for family coverage, which now resemble mortgage payments for most people whose companies don't provide enough in subsidies for the coverage.
ReplyDelete