Posted by
John Caile on Friday, March 13, 2009 12:16:56 PM
Those paying most of America's bills are getting sick of hearing about "middle class tax cuts" - and they're really fed up with free-loaders who pay no income taxes whatsoever. It's time for tax policy that actually does make everyone pay their "fair share" instead of forcing our most productive citizens to shoulder an ever more repressive tax burden.
Contrary to the myth perpetrated by liberal propagandists, the so-called "rich" actually pay an outrageously excessive share of the nation's taxes. Even ultra-liberal New York Mayor Bloomberg finally admitted that more than 50% of New York City tax revenue comes from less than 1% of the city's population!
The best solution would of course be to eliminate the income tax altogether, and replace it with a national sales tax. But, with a Democrat Congress and a Democrat President, the chances for any kind of sanity in tax policy are virtually nil - because for Democrats, tax policy has never been about economic reality, let alone fiscal responsibility. For them, tax policy has always been a means of taking from those who achieve so they can give to society's losers (otherwise known as the Democrat base).
But if we are going to continue to tax income, the only (genuinely) fair way to do it is to make sure that EVERYONE pays. Under the current system, an ever shrinking percentage of people are paying more and more, while a growing segment of the population is paying less and less, with almost 40% paying NO income taxes at all.
Worse, these same dead-beats are actually getting what amounts to welfare checks FROM the government under misleading labels like the "earned income tax credit." This is not only obscenely unfair, it is fiscally untenable in the long term. With ever more people riding IN the cart, at some point, those pulling the cart will eventually decide that enough is enough, and either throttle back in their businesses, or just "cash out" altogether.
Mayor Bloomberg expressed fear that if even a small percentage of the high achievers now paying the tab were to leave New York for greener (lower tax) pastures, the city could be facing a financial crisis. Imagine if just a fraction of the nation's top talent decide to just throw in the towel - we could be looking at virtual bankruptcy on a national scale.
Sadly, Obama has already put us on that path - his so-called "stimulus" package is nothing but a huge run-up of spending, using the equivalent of the nation's credit card (to be paid for by your children and grandchildren), while including yet more "tax credits" to those who don't pay any taxes in the first place.
Instead, if we really want to bring the country out of recession, we should be CUTTING government spending, and reducing, not increasing, the tax burden on our most productive citizens. We should be cutting the capital gains tax to near-zero, cutting the corporate tax rate to 10%, and cutting the top marginal individual tax rate to 25%.
Oh, and one more thing. We should RAISE the bottom tax rate to 15% - starting FROM THE FIRST DOLLAR earned. I know, the current thinking has always been to tax those at the bottom less and less, but look where that strategy has gotten us. Besides, it's time that everyone has "skin in the game." After all, we want to be "fair" now, don't we?
And we need to make all of these changes PERMANENT. There is no "quick fix" for a market economy, but time and again, both here and around the world, the surest way to promote growth is to cut taxes on those who provide the jobs. And short term tax breaks aren't the answer - the private sector responds to long term certainty, and the resulting economic growth from predicable and permanent tax cuts would provide a real "stimulus" to the people who actually make this country work.
Real jobs come from private sector entrepreneurs, not government. As hard as it is for liberals to swallow, the undeniable truth is that the best thing we can do for "the poor" is to cut taxes on "the rich."