The Latest Right-Wing Fantasy: Average Taxpayers as Freeloaders

[marmar]

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:



Have Average Taxpayers Become Freeloaders?
Opponents of the proposal for a 5.4 percent health care reform surtax on America’s wealthy are getting desperate. They've even turned their fire onto middle-income Americans.

July 27, 2009

By Sam Pizzigati


Friends and fans of privilege have been striking their indignant pose the last two weeks. They’re shocked, simply shocked, that House Democratic leaders would dare advance a health care reform plan that sets a 5.4 percent surtax on households making over $1 million a year.

Affluent Americans, flacks for grand fortune are fuming, already pay the bulk of the nation’s income taxes. They'll pay virtually all of it, these critics charge, if the surtax becomes law and Congress lets the George W. Bush tax cuts for the comfortable expire, as scheduled, after 2010.

Amid all this, the most indignant of fortune’s defenders now seem to believe, average Americans have become irresponsible freeloaders, ever eager, as conservative columnist Caroline Baum puts it, to “encourage their elected representatives to vote ‘yes’ on every new benefit that comes down the pike.”

Fulminates David Harsanyi, a Denver Post columnist outraged by the health surtax notion: “President Barack Obama once promised to spread the wealth. How about spreading the responsibility, as well? Let the everyday citizen feel the cost of these gazillion-dollar legislative miracles.”

In reality, of course, everyday American citizens are pulling their weight and then some. They actually pay a higher share of their incomes in taxes — total taxes, not just federal income tax — than super rich Americans. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.toomuchonline.org/articlenew_2009/july27a.html

[Hydra]

1. Man, the myths of America are THICK

The people at the top get massive bailouts from us, and cry foul when we ask them to pay their fair share.

Apparently the 95% of the cake isn't enough for some people.

[Mojambo]

2. Mitch Albom, peddler of sappy schlock books chimes in with a defense of the super rich today...

http://www.freep.com/article/20090725/COL01/90725036

[marmar]

3. Looking after his own interests, no doubt.....

..... at one time I thought Mitch Albom was a really good sports columnist, until he started writing cheesy non-sports books, fabricating columns and his head swelled to elephantine proportions.

[dana_b]

4. 5.4% on a couple of million bucks and you won't feel shit

5.4% on $50,000 and it's gonna hurt. These assholes have no clue nor do they give a damn.