Why Taxing the Rich Makes Sense

[cal04]

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2011/wolff020311.html

Over the last half century, the richest Americans shifted the burden of the federal individual income tax off themselves onto everybody else. The three convenient and accurate Wikipedia graphs below show the details. The first graph compares the official tax rates paid by the top and bottom income earners. Notice especially that from the end of World War 2 into the early 1960s, the highest income earners paid a tax rate over 90% during many years. Today, the top earners pay a rate of only 35%. Notice also how the gap between the rates paid by the richest and the poorest has narrowed. If we take into account the many loopholes the rich can and do use far more than the poor, the gap narrows even more.



One conclusion is clear and obvious: the richest Americans have dramatically lowered their income tax burden since 1945, both absolutely and relative to the tax burdens of the middle-income groups and the poor.

Consider two further points based on the graph above: (1) if the highest income earners today were required to pay the same rate that they paid for many years after 1945, the federal government would need far lower deficits to support the private economy through its current crisis, and (2) those tax-the-rich years after 1945 experienced far lower unemployment and far faster economic growth than we have had for years.

The lower taxes they got for themselves are one reason why the rich have become so much richer over the last half century. Just as their tax rates started to come down from their 1960s heights, so their shares of the total national income began their rise. As the two other Wikipedia graphs below show, we have now returned to the extreme inequality of income that characterized the US a century ago.

[Orrex]

1. I hate to belabor the obvious, but this point *is* obvious to everyone

Well, everyone except the super-rich, their paid-for legislators, and impoverished Republican voters who can't see how they continue to be duped, that is.

[ladjf]

6. If the point is obvious to everyone, why is continuing to happen

with virtually no substantial opposition? I think it obvious to many but not nearly enough to turn the tide in the other direction. How can it be done? I don't know. But, there is a way.

[Zoeisright]

2. Damn straight.

Tax the fuck out of them.

[yurbud]

3. someone said the rich pay taxes for a balanced budget or surplus but MAKE money on deficits by

buying T bills.

So there's an extra short term gain as well as saving the taxes they aren't paying.

[Warpy]

4. Why tax the rich? Because they stole all the money

Thank you, Willie Sutton.

[ladjf]

7. Beautifully put! Continue the bitching. nt

[grasswire]

5. Hoarders. Spread the word.

The 1 percent at the top are HOARDERS and they wreak the same kind of damage in our American community as their mentally ill counterparts who hoard egg cartons or pets or junk do to their own families.

Help them help themselves. Tax them so they stop hurting everyone else.

[ladjf]

8. "Hoarders" is the perfect term to use. It clearly shows that they

are having a psychiatric disorder and should be dealt with as the sick people they are. The last thing any one of them would do is to voluntarily submit to increased taxes on themselves.

[grasswire]

9. yep

and what do Hoarders need? An intervention.

They can't help themselves. We must help them by taxing them so they will not foul the American nest any further.