So with this brilliant idea of using a surtax on the wealthy to pay for an exorbitant and counter-productive health care plan, Democrats in Washington have left behind the latent "hose the rich" philosophy where they pretend to be operating within the bounds of some warped definition of fairness and have dispensed with all pretense that they are doing anything other than robbing the rich to feed (or treat the sniffles of, as it were) the poor.The important distinction between this and the bad behavior of our government that we have previously come to accept is that this is a specific tax on a specific group of people to pay for specific services for another specific group of people that is distinct from the paying group. In other words, it is a direct transfer of wealth. We're used to those who make more money having their money taken from them at a greater rate, but there is usually at least a pretense of everyone paying their part.
Let's consider it making up for Reagan destroying our economy with that "trickle down" malarkey.
ReplyDeleteNot that this will make you feel any better, but I'm pretty sure that's just not true. Reasonably sizable portions of the population already pay no federal income taxes, but receive benefits like TANF (1997) and Medicaid (1965). The EITC (1975) offers a tax refund that pushes some borderline cases from tax payers to tax-receivers. (Reagan loved the EITC, for what it's worth)
ReplyDeleteAgain, not that you're going to like any of that, but just to be clear that this new tax would be part of a proud tradition...
dmw
I actually like the EITC too, but it's not exactly a handout; it just allows people to get back some of the money they had taken through social security and medicare taxes.
ReplyDeleteObviously, there have always been people who are net recipients and some who don't pay any taxes at all, but there is a clear distinction between a philosophy that allows for a broadly applied graduated income tax (not that I'm a big fan of that either) and a philosophy that allows for a specific tax, separate from the broader system, that applies to a very small segment of the population, the receipts of which are earmarked from the outset (rather than contributed to the general coffers) to fund specific services for a group of people that is nearly mutually exclusive from the group of people who are paying the tax.
The difference is in the specificity of the taxed population combined with the predetermined use of revenue. Medicaid is paid for without its own separate tax. Things like Social Security and Medicare are paid for through specific taxes, but they are distributed to all members of the population, and there is an upper bound on the amount of income that can be taxed for these purposes. In the case of Social Security, the benefits are even distributed in accordance with the amount that an individual paid in. This is because there was a time when the American people could not stomach the sort of blatant and specific transfer of wealth represented by this tax. I suppose we'll soon find whether that has changed. I hope it has not.