I'm sick and fucking tired of every criticism of GOP tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest people being answered with "Oh, that's just Democrats trying to wage class warfare again".
Warfare? I don't see anyone burning down the homes of the Rich. I don't see GE's facilities being attacked. If there is a war, the Rich are waging it. But I don't think there is one. So Bill Frist can stop saying the word. It's as old and tired as Democrats shouting "Racism!". Not quite so old and tired as most of the Senate, though.
When someone says "The bulk of these tax cuts will go to the wealthiest Americans and corporations." they are just STATING THE FACTS!!!! And stating a fact != waging war. This is why we never have real debate anymore. Niether side can do anything that hasn't been market tested. If it doesn't envolve a keyword meant to enrage the senses of a [redneck, liberal, conservative, auto-worker, AARP Exec] then a Senator isn't going to say it.
And that, more than any police state or corruption, is the real death of our once great institution of Government. When ad hom attacks and non-sequitors are the only thing we hear from our leaders, what value do they have to us?
Posted by danisaacs at May 28, 2003 09:40 AM | TrackBackOf course a tax cut is going to benefit the rich the most. Why? Two reasons:
They're taxed at a MUCH higher percentage than the average person, itself a completely unfair practice.
They make more money than the average person, so they have a higher liability to discount.
Assume for a moment that you paid $500 in taxes and Joe Rich Guy paid $50,000... now, there's a 10% tax cut. You now pay $50 less, and Joe pays $5000 less. Is that somehow "unfair", because he got a "better break" than you did? No, because he still ends up paying 100 times more than you did.
Don't even get into the fact that - relative to his income - he paid an even higher tax rate than you did, possibly as much as three times higher percentage.
Posted by: Derek on May 28, 2003 09:53 AMPlease note that I was not bitching about the Tax cuts per se. I was bitching about the refusal of it's supporters in the Senate to make reasoned arguments in favor of it.
On the merits of the cut: It makes sense that the people who benefit most from a society should bear the brunt of it's costs. The rich pay more, because they HAVE more. That is not unfair. Fair means paying your share, and their share is much higher than mine. And I'm what many on the left would call rich.
Will this cut help the economy? Perhaps slightly. Not a lot. It won't help the Government nearly as much as it helps the people that finance election campaigns. And it won't help me more than the increase of the debt ceiling by ~$1,000,000,000,000 to ~$7,400,000,000,000 will hurt me.
I'm all for them taking less money from us. But I think there are more effective ways to do that that will translate into more tangible economic results than giving money back to people that already have enough. As shell games go, this one isn't being played very well.
Don't give money back to my CEO. Give it back to me. Give me a 2,000 rebate, and I'll spend it. And spending makes the world go round. Give the $50-120K households meaningful money, and they will spend it. They will drive the economy. We love to consume.
"Assume for a moment that you paid $500 in taxes and Joe Rich Guy paid $50,000... now, there's a 10% tax cut. You now pay $50 less, and Joe pays $5000 less. Is that somehow "unfair", because he got a "better break" than you did?"
Of course not. Hence why if they said "we're going to cut taxes 10% across the board" we wouldn't be arguing this. However, instead they're saying "we're going to reduce the amount of tax you pay on a type of income that most of the poorer segment of the population has precisely zero of" and that is our "tax cut". That, to me, is unfair.
Posted by: ColdForged on May 28, 2003 10:16 AM"The rich pay more, because they HAVE more"
sounds remarkably like another popular phrase
"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."
... and we all know how far THAT economic and political system got.
Posted by: Derek on May 28, 2003 03:50 PMThat system was never tried. Something about the corruptive nature of power always prevented it from reaching fruition.
In this case, we have a group of people that are benefitting exponentially more than another group from the economic structure. Now, does it make sense that the people getting the most benefit should pay the most? I think so.
I pay a ton more in taxes that I used to make. But I'm doing OK. Because I can afford to live very comfortably and still pay my taxes. And so can everyone that makes as much or 10x what I do. Could I use tax relief? Sure I could. But do I "need" it? No.
Does my CEO, worth millions already, need a few thousand more in his bank account? Will it make any difference in how much he spends? If the purpose is to spur consumer spending as the President has claimed, then why are is the money going back to people that aren't likely to spend it?
Posted by: Arguably Dan on May 28, 2003 04:12 PMI think an across-the-board tax cut, like ColdForged stated above, would be a reasonable way of handling things. But when a taxcut package comes out with as many provisions as this one did, where many of those provisions are aimed not at straight income but items like dividend income (which is definitely slanted in favor of the rich), then you start running into cries of "unfair", and reasonably so.
Of course the rich pay a higher percentage of taxes - that is reasonable and expected due simply to their income. (If you are making 10 times what somebody else is making, shouldn't you be paying more in taxes?) But when the taxcut package provisions aren't an across-the-board percentage cut, but a number of specialized cuts that really only benefit individual economic groups, then there is a problem.
Posted by: Mark on May 30, 2003 11:03 AM