Taxes are not just for the rich

Most of us have heard the statistics about how rich folks pay most of the country’s taxes, right? According to an article by Ari Fleischer titled “The Taxpaying Minority,” the top 1% of income earners pay 37% of the nation’s tax bill. The top 10% pay 40% and the bottom 40%, middle class pay less than 5%, and the bottom 40% of workers pay absolutely nothing. Heck, with the “earned” income tax credit the very bottom even gets paid by the federal government simply for the sake of existing.

With the Earned Income Tax Credit many of these patriots even receive handouts by the federal government, taken from the rest of the chumps who pay taxes. When a large percentage of the population has no vested interest in the fiscal solvency of the state, they are prone to demand increasingly irresponsible programs until a crisis forces change. The Romans called the crisis “civil war” after which a dictatorship was established.

An unconstrained Democracy that fails to safeguard property rights will always tend to force a minority to pay the bills for the majority. Right now we have 60% of the population forcing 40% to pay the bills…why not make 1% pay for the other 99%?

As English historian, Alexander Tyler, stated in his analysis of the decline of Greek civilization, “A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority will always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by dictatorship.”

When something is free there is little incentive to limit consumption or portion resources for long-term health. Free Big Macs at McDonald’s would likely lead to obesity and a heartattack within a decade. The same goes for paying taxes, which are how we pay for the benefits living in a governed society affords. When we are not responsible for paying the bills that government generates we do not care so much for how much money is spent.

I hope America can get its act together and fix one of the only safeguards to ensuring our Democracy doesn’t devolve into apathetic, dependent, serfdom. The rich should pay more taxes since they derive greater benefit from government, but the middle class and poor also derive benefits for which they must pay their proportionate share. Pandering to these majority voting blocks by promising to stick it to the rich even more sounds great from a podium, but has only one inevitable outcome.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!