Opinion

Taxes: Not a dirty word

As President Obama and the Republicans in Congress prepare to butt heads over the 2011 federal budget, there are three words on everyone’s lips: cuts, cuts, cuts.

It’s no wonder that cutting spending is on everyone’s mind, considering that the federal deficit is projected to surpass $15 trillion this year, according to Obama’s own projections. Scarier still, this figure puts the deficit at over 100 percent of GDP for the first time since World War II.

Republicans have enjoyed trotting out that last point lately, while trying their best to avoid salivating too obviously over the thought of defunding social programs they’ve been trying to destroy since the New Deal.

It’s no surprise then that their assessments have conveniently omitted how that staggering debt was paid down — with top marginal tax rates north of 90 percent. Today, the top marginal tax rate is a paltry 35 percent, and there are no further income brackets above $311,950.

Graphic courtesy of FiveThirtyEight

This means that the vast majority of the hyper-rich’s income is essentially subject to a flat tax, undermining the spirit of the progressive taxation system and fulfilling the longtime dream of “starve the beast” conservatives.

After 30 years of conservative dominance in Washington, taxation has become a dirty word. Even liberal polls consider raising taxes on the rich to be “off the table,” deferring to decades of Friedmanite Chicago School nonsense that labels any attempt to make the extremely wealthy pay their fair share as “class warfare.” Meanwhile, the infrastructure is crumbling, the social safety net is fraying, and the gap between rich and poor is widening.

There is indeed a class war going on in America, and it’s being waged by the corporate country club set against the rest of us.
While their taxes get slashed, the rest of us shoulder a bigger share of the tax burden. While they take home fat government-backed bonuses, the rest of us haven’t had a raise in years and are told to “tighten our belts.”

They have spent decades and untold billions convincing us that they are somehow exempt from their responsibilities toward their fellow citizens, all too happy to sell off our public institutions and replace them with their wholly owned alternatives.

Benjamin Franklin said it best: “All the property that is necessary to a man, for the conservation of the individual and the propagation of the species, is his natural right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all property superfluous to such purposes is the property of the public… He that does not like civil society on these terms, let him retire and live among savages. He can have no right to the benefits of society, who will not pay his club towards the support of it.”