Taxation without differentiation

This is an absolute must-read, must print out and share article.

One of the (to me) most mystifying common denominators among my Republican friends is their insistence that progressive taxation is a terrible, evil thing. A tax like a federal sales tax (actually a tax hike for the working poor) is the only fair way to run things. You know, because if Bill Gates pays a nickel and a single, working mother without health insurance pays a nickel-- well, that's equality. That's fair. Ironically, my Republican friends who feel this way are also the most religious people I know.

Well, in the NYT series on class issues in America we learn that these fair-minded souls have it wrong on both counts. They decry the poor as leeching off of their hard-earned dough-- the wealthier you are, the more you're getting screwed by Uncle Sam. In fact, under Fearless Leader's brilliant economic policy, they're probably paying more of their income in taxes than those above them in the income brackets. Would they call that fair? No, they'd just cry "liberal propaganda" and keep on hating the working poor in the guise of egalitarianism and tough love. And they wonder why we liberals are so upset with the course our nation is on...

From the story:

The share of the nation's income earned by those in this uppermost category has more than doubled since 1980, to 7.4 percent in 2002. The share of income earned by the rest of the top 10 percent rose far less, and the share earned by the bottom 90 percent fell.

Next, examine the net worth of American households. The group with homes, investments and other assets worth more than $10 million comprised 338,400 households in 2001, the last year for which data are available. The number has grown more than 400 percent since 1980, after adjusting for inflation, while the total number of households has grown only 27 percent.

The Bush administration tax cuts stand to widen the gap between the hyper-rich and the rest of America. The merely rich, making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, will shoulder a disproportionate share of the tax burden.

President Bush said during the third election debate last October that most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income Americans. In fact, most - 53 percent - will go to people with incomes in the top 10 percent over the first 15 years of the cuts, which began in 2001 and would have to be reauthorized in 2010. And more than 15 percent will go just to the top 0.1 percent, those 145,000 taxpayers.