- Jan 12, 2005
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Originally posted by: Genx87
Originally posted by: shira
Historically, our system has been progressive (those who make more pay at a higher tax rate than those who make less). The Bush tax cuts - especially when combined with the effects of the (un-amended by Bush) Alternative Minimum Tax - made our system a lot less progressive. Over the last few decades, the disparity between the rich and middle class has grown enormously and (if my memory serves) the "real" earnings of the middle class have remained stagnant for at least the past 20 years. Add these trends up and extrapolate several more decades and we could end up with a system like those in many Central and South American countries, where large majorities of the population lives in poverty, the middle class is very small, and a tiny percentage have 99% of the total wealth.
No one has to SAY the rich are favored. Simply look at realty to see how advantaged the rich are and how well they're doing.
"Limited government" advocates would just accelerate this trend. So would the flat tax you mentioned.
My question to you is: Why would you want to advocate a system where a tiny percentage of the population does well and the rest do badly? Why would you want to live in a place where, in all likelihood, most of your relatives and friends and acquaintances would have to struggle for a decent life?
What are you talking about? The % of people who effectively pay no fed income tax increased under Bush.
This is an absurd argument, utterly irrelevant to what I've written.
Your point, apparently, is that you think if 1000 more poor people paid no taxes after the Bush cuts, that somehow means something. But if those 1000 poor people in aggregate save (say) $200,000 but one rich person has his taxes reduced from (say) $10,000,000 to $9,700,000, I fail to see how that result as anything but unfair.
Furthermore (and this was the essential point of my original post), if those same lucky 1000 poor people who saved $200 in taxes are at the same time burdened with MORE than $200 in additional living costs because "limited government" has shifted some costs formerly paid by the government onto them, then they are net losers, whereas the wealthy are net big winners. And this isn't even considering that even if the poor and middle classes as a whole come out somewhat ahead, the overall trend is that the poor and middle classes are shouldering a greater share of the overall cost (public + private) than they did before. The system has become more regressive.