America's European Style Tax System

Pure Redistributon

Far be it from me to defend taxation, and I certainly am not one to tout government as the chosen tool to ensure fairness except in treatment by the law, but this is a bit ridiculous wouldn’t you say?

About 47 percent [of US housholds] will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability. That’s according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research organization.

Liberals like to go on and on about a “progressive tax system” (so do Marxists, but that’s another story).  But my understanding of a progressive system is that everyone pays, just that those on the bottom end of the income scale pay less than those on the top.  But in reality, in this “progressive system” most of the bottom end of the income scale are paying nothing.

So that explains all the calls to insurance agents, doctors and human resources offices asking “where can I get me some of that free Obamacare?”  We’ve established a defacto welfare class through the “progressive tax system”:

The bottom 40 percent, on average, make a profit from the federal income tax, meaning they get more money in tax credits than they would otherwise owe in taxes. For those people, the government sends them a payment.

“We have 50 percent of people who are getting something for nothing,” said Curtis Dubay, senior tax policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation.

Ironically, when it comes to health care, the “fairness” argument from the Democrats and “progressives” requires an individual mandate since they claim that without everyone paying into the system costs can’t come down (even though that won’t cut costs either, that’s their argument).

But this goes to a bigger problem – a mindset of entitlement.  And that is a mindset that favors the status quo (or its expansion) since it is to the advantage of those who benefit and, one would assume, they find no reason to challenge any program which may expand it.  ObamaCare is simply the latest.

Since they have no skin in the game, it costs them nothing to be complacent and they’re not likely to stir themselves to save that portion of Americans paying taxes from having to pay more to fund the redistribution of income from which they benefit via the “progressive” tax code.  Loot the rich is good where they’re sitting.

Taxes, at best, are a necessary evil with which we fund the necessities of government.  What taxation isn’t, or certainly what our founders never intended it to be, was a vast system of redistribution of income.  The tax system we have is an abomination -  it isn’t “fair”, it’s isn’t “progressive” and it violates the function of taxation as described by our founders.

But it is certainly a handy tool for big government progressives with which to grow their constituency and pad their vote counts.  It must surprise them somewhat that some of those on this plantation they’ve been building for years are, for some unknown reason, attending Tea Parties and protesting the direction of the country.  Even some of those who benefit from the redistributionist status quo understand that it’s just not right and certainly not a principle upon which this nation was founded.

~McQ



Source Gando