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Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (56562)	3/27/2007 12:08:49 PM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

The Cartoons of Pulitzer Prize-Winner Michael Ramirez Investor's Business Daily ibdeditorials.com

To: Sully- who wrote (56562)	3/27/2007 12:19:38 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 90947

The Great Redistribution Machine John Hood The Corner The Washington-based Tax Foundation has just put out a new report full of explosive facts — explosive, I say, because their use at your next dinner party or faculty meeting is guaranteed to make your lefty friends' heads explode. The Tax Foundation folks grouped together all federal, state, and local government spending and revenues. Then they looked at the net effect on income quintiles. The results confirmed the extent to which American government has become a redistribution scheme. The bottom 20 percent of households in income received about $8.21 in government spending for every dollar contributed in taxes (they don't pay income taxes, of course, but they do pay a variety of other taxes, such as on sales and property). In the middle quintile, households got $1.30 in government stuff for every tax dollar. You mathematically inclined know where I'm going with this — someone has to pay the bills. It's basically the top quintile, who consumed 41 cents in government benefits for every dollar surrendered. In 2004, the amount of income redistributed in this manner was between $1 trillion and $1.5 trillion. And, of course, it's just not enough. The authors provided a hopeful (from their perspective) conclusion to all this: <<< Once we see that tax progressivity is only half the picture, and that progressivity can be achieved through either taxes or spending, ... lawmakers’ opposition to economically efficient tax reforms no longer makes sense. Any amount of progressivity can be achieved by some mix of tax and spending changes. That means it’s possible to move toward a flatter, more economically neutral tax code, without reducing the progressivity in the fiscal system.These types of win-win reforms are hidden from view in the current policy environment that’s fixated on tax progressivity. And this blindness toward government spending isn’t just a harmless omission. It often leads to poor tax policy. >>> corner.nationalreview.com taxfoundation.org