This kind of tripe makes my stomach turn:
In the 1980s, fewer than a third of Americans received some sort of government benefits. That figure has risen to about 50 percent, The Wall Street Journal reported last week. At the same time, 45 percent of Americans pay no federal income taxes.
If these trends are not reversed, we can kiss the United States of America goodbye. We will soon reach a point at which most of the people have their standard of living subsidized by the earnings of a quarter, or maybe a fifth or fewer, of the rest. No nation can sustain the economic and cultural strength that has graced the United States while transferring so much wealth from so few to so many.
Where to begin? How about with the fact that those paying no federal income tax are still paying taxes, and usually at much higher rates than those in the upper tax brackets? Sales taxes, property taxes, the payroll tax, gasoline tax, fees, all of these are essentially flat taxes, which impact those with lower incomes much more than those with more, so much so that many working-class Americans are paying a higher percentage of their earnings in taxes than the richest among us.
Second, the growing numbers of Americans slipping out of the tax brackets is a symptom of the growing divide between rich and the rest of us, not the machinations of a greedy underclass. The causes of unequal income distribution is hotly disputed, but it's likely it was spurred in large party by a more pro-corporate conservative US fiscal policy, the decline of unions, the implementation of free trade policies, and a whacked-out wage system that unjustly rewards a small and select group of self-anointed superstar corporate executives. That's right: the socio-political trend that's pushing more Americans into poverty is a result of free-market greed and insane economic policy. We are a nation that has come to worship greed and material consumption.
So, yeah. Whoever wrote this editorial is blaming the poor for their own misfortune, while urging us all to suck up more to the ueber-rich and free them from the disastrous consequences of their own self-serving and destructive policies.
No thanks. |
