People seem to have a deep-seated need to believe that things are getting worse. Especially in the world at large, or their country. The funny thing being, aside from a few relatively brief periods of instability, it's never really been true in living memory.
What I haven't been able to decide, to my satisfaction, is whether I believe this tendency toward pessimism and fear of a looming catastrophe is mostly a cultural phenomenon, or something burned into the human animal as an instinct. Maybe it's a little of both.
Anyway, John Stossel, who is always interesting and iconoclastic, has a list of Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity that you might want to read. Having researched some of these issues myself, I can tell you that he's on the money on most of it, and I have little doubt that the rest of it is also true.
The rich don't pay enough is one of the top ten media myths, and to prove this, we have a quote from Al Sharpton. Right. Then he talks exclusively about income taxes and he talks about absolute shares rather than percentage-wise. Again, right.
Well, Max, they already pay a bigger percentage of their income than anyone else, and they pay the majority of the taxes. Both of those are just facts and not matters of opinion.
That being the case, what, in your view, is the proper percentage for them to pay?
Perhaps Max thinks that rich people are, by definition, thieves, so it's ok to take money from them? :)
Dean,
What max probably wants to do is state that the proportion of taxes taken out of a guy's 30k salary is higher than the proportion of taxes taken out of another guy's 300k salary. He's right - but I fail to see how punishing the guy making 300k with more taxes would help the guy making 30k...this is the disconnect; at bottom it comes from an animosity towards the rich which is ultimately based upon Marxist mythology that the rich are rich because they stole from the poor.
Mark:
While I'm sure that there is some therapeutic value to screaming, "Marxist," whenever the opportunity evenly remotely presents itself, the notion that the rich and powerful take from the poor and weak is hardly an invention of the 19th century; it's as old, and demonstrable, as civilization itself.
What Stossel's myth-exploding neglected to point out in this particular case is that when social security withholding is factored into the tax calculations, the tax rates of all income levels are roughly equivalent. Now, while there may appear to be a rough justice for some (to wit: the wealthy) in this equivalency, the social contract requires that most all citizens appreciate this justice.
For example, the social contract would appear to require that all able-bodied men participate in the defense of the society. My guess is that very few U.S. casualties in Vietnam or Iraq were drawn from the affluent classes. And hell, in the present war, the rich have seen their only other obligation to participate in the defense of the realm, i.e. to pay for it, reduced as well. Tax cuts in a time of sacrifice, hmmm, maybe the wealthy are relying on their children paying down the deficit. I guess there's a very rough justice to this.
About the general tendency to be negative about things - I think the folks from the liberal-left of the political spectrum are definitely guilty of that in a big way. In the university town I live in, all I hear is a constant stream of negativity - complaining and whining about how things are not as they ought to be. Heck, i betcha, if Hillary Clinton was elected to the presidency today, there will be people bitching about how what she is doing is not good enough.
Stossel is right that money doesn't buy happiness, but the lack of money sure can buy a lot of stress. But there is a certain income level at which your basic needs are met with enough of a cushion to get you through rough patches. More than that won't make you appreciably happier.
Bloggerhead,
But "Marxist" is just too handy...anyways, it was Karl Marx who crystallised all the economic idiocy...any additional economic idiocy since Marx's time has been more of refinement of idiocy rather than new, groundbreaking idiocy.
Rather than get into an argument over why the rich are rich and the poor are poor, however, lets actually take a look at the situation as is - certainly, when you add up income taxes (90% of which come from "the rich") with SS taxes (mostly middle class payments), property taxes (ditto), sales taxes (ditto), etc, etc, etc you can make the argument that a higher proporption of a middle class persons income goes into taxes than the proporption of a rich persons income goes into taxation - the solution, however, is not to increase the taxation of the rich, but to lower the taxation of the middle class (the poor don't really pay taxes, except for sales taxes of varied types - but even if a poor person spent 100% of his, say, 20k a year income on taxable purchases, his tax burden is still less than that on the middle class, or the rich). It doesn't, you see, help anyone to increase taxes on anyone - sometimes we do need more taxes for genuinely vital needs, but its not helping - trust me; you take money from someone, they ain't helped.
The answer to the unfairness of payroll taxes being added to income taxes on the middle class is to end the payroll tax - allow the middle class to invest their money in private retirement accounts; the answer is not to increase the taxation of the rich, which will provide only a bit more money, and money which will come at an economic cost because then there will be less money in the economy for private use.
Jerry,
Money doesn't buy happiness...but, lets all agree that we wouldn't be adverse to finding out if we can be both rich and happy....
:o)
Marx never took out his own garbage in winter because he was afraid of catching a cold. Plus the landfill was already full.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the next republican president of the United States:
The Rev. Al Sharpton.
Mark: Agreed. I would not at all mind being "challenged" to remain happy in the face of a sudden influx of wealth. ;)
Jerry,
Might not buy happiness, but it can probably rent it for at least a really cool weekend....
Tim,
Only if he goes in for tax cuts and changes his hair style...
"What Stossel's myth-exploding neglected to point out in this particular case is that when social security withholding is factored into the tax calculations, the tax rates of all income levels are roughly equivalent. Now, while there may appear to be a rough justice for some (to wit: the wealthy) in this equivalency, the social contract requires that most all citizens appreciate this justice."
But wait. I thought Social Security was a benefit. I though having your money taken away now and given to you later was supposed to make you better off than if you got to keep that money and decide for yourself what to do with it.
You mean that Social Security is a bad deal? That people would be better off not buying into it? Surely you jest...
It is quite historically interesting that politicians--Democrats in particular--are increasingly simply admitting openly that they view Social Security as a tax, and not a retirement contribution. For decades, they insisted that it wasn't a tax at all, that it was in fact a "contribution" to a retirement fund that you would get back if you retired or became disabled.
By admitting that it's a tax, you also therefore admit that it's merely a wealth-redistribution system--a welfare check, in short.
This is a fundamental change in how politicians have usually tried to portray it.
That being the case, it should only make it easier to make the transition to private accounts. Because admitting that it's a tax, admitting that it's about wealth redistribution, can only emphasize to middle-class workers like myself that Social Security is premised on a lie, that there is no trust fund, and that as currently structured it is truly just a welfare check.
We need to do the right thing morally and transition the system to private accounts, which is exactly what Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposed when he first set the system up. After his death, Congress failed to fulfill that promise to privatize.
Time to keep FDR's promise.
Until they stop taking the SS surplus and spending it on their vote buying projects it’s a tax. They are spending the very money that was supposed to keep the program solvent through the actuarial period of the baby boom retirement. But since they are using it to mask the true size of the deficit the argument that payroll taxes represent a benefit is weak at best.
I is also interesting that the analysis that people like to make is to use income tax almost exclusively and incomes to define “rich”. If you were to look a the ration of taxes paid to the assets the “rich” those in the top 10% of asset ownership would be paying a scandalously small amount as a ration then anyone in the middle class.
Now my feeling is that since the maintenance of property and property rights are one of the main legitimate functions that almost no one argues with, it seem that tax liability should morally and properly be evaluated in terms of a ration to the amount of property one owns not their income. This is not to suggest that we impose an asset tax. While that would be a superior way to distribute the tax burdened from a standpoint of fairness, it would be wholly impractical, but when analyzing the tax burden it is completely fair and proper that we look at assets for analysis or else you don’t really get a good sense as to why a flatter tax system is tragically unfair. Those with the most to lose economically should bear the bigger burden of taxation.
Good piece. I love John Stossel. The common theme throughout his pieces seems to be: most problems can be avoided with a little common sense and decency. If everyone did this, then most of the arguments about govt mandating this or business doing that would be moot.
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