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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Dietrich who wrote (33355)	2/25/2009 10:06:30 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 71588

It also puts to rest the lie that the bottom 40% of workers don't pay taxes and therefore aren't entitled to tax cuts. They don't pay income taxes, so you can't cut their taxes by cutting income taxes. Want to cut their taxes? Cut payroll and excise taxes. It's exactly this sort of lie that has helped rationalize increasing the tax burden on the lower quintiles while lightening it on the upper quintiles. As the report shows the upper quintiles, and percentages have a noticeably larger tax burden. And the percentage of people at the bottom (no some in the middle) paying no income taxes at all has steadily increased, starting at least since Reagan, maybe from before him. I think a nice flat wealth tax would be the fairest thing we could institute, maybe not the most practical or most efficient, but the fairest... At more than a very minimal rate, and perhaps even then, it would be unfair, unpractical, inefficient, and generally foolish and wrong.