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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: quehubo who wrote (149533)	11/11/2010 11:57:45 PM
From: wonk	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541791

quehubo, if you found the sarcasm offensive, then I apologize. I think there are many areas we might find agreement, but we have a fundamental different worldview when it comes to this. ...The real issue is spending, spending on social programs that the liberals think the rich will have to pay for. In the end the people doing most of the producing and tax paying will be paying more, more of their time and sacrifice will be transferred to others. Many of these others who could do a much better job of providing for themselves... Spending is a distraction. Spending has been bouncing around oh 19-21% of GDP since the end WWII. Over the past two years revenue has slumped because the economy is weak. The people doing most of the producing in this country are not the rich. I’ve asked this at other times before. As a percentage of the population how many is many? How many could be doing a much better job of providing for themselves? Is it 10%, 20% 30%. I’m not for shoveling money out of trucks. But the majority of the people in this country are decent and hard working and play by the Rules. Since we’ve crafted a system where no one has employment security regardless of one’s talent, skill or loyalty, or any combination thereof, there has to be mechanisms in place to set a floor on how far one can fall. But the way people are distracted from the humanitarian instinct “…there but for the grace of God go I …” is to focus your attention on the people who take advantage. And it is a powerful distraction because we all want to keep as much as we can. Who doesn’t think they have earned it? As an intellectual exercise, just consider the addictive power of the “welfare queen in the Cadillac” metaphor. It lets one keep more of their money – without pangs of guilt. But put aside the emotional and the moral. Let’s look at the issue of citizenry. There are privileges and responsibilities. Over the past 30 years the opportunity and privilege to acquire great wealth has been massively expanded – mostly at the expense of one’s fellow citizens by financial arbitrage of businesses and employment. Now where is the corresponding responsibility? Getting back to the original tax point, the corresponding responsibility is to bear one fair burden in taxes. And that was the point of the graph showing that the well-to-do are paying less and less in taxes as a percentage share of national income. You and Paul rebutted with the income tax argument. Mathematically and rhetorically, I was trying to show that the argument is a diversion.