Quote from Free Thinker:
its a common meme with the republican spinmeisters that the poor should pay more taxes while they cut taxes for the wealthy. facts make no difference to them but here are some anyhow:
Rick Perry: Middle Income Americans Don't Pay Enough Income Taxes
But back in the real world, I learn from newly minted GOP presidential candidate Rick Perry whatâs wrong with Americaâthat middle income Americans donât pay enough taxes. Really.
âWeâre dismayed at the injustice that nearly half of all Americans donât even pay any income tax. (Quoted in this terrific Ruth Marcus column.)
Weâre apparently not dismayed that more than half of all Americans have been in a 30-year recession with little or no income growth. Weâre apparently willing to write off Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes, which are the big federal taxes for low- and middle-income Americans. A family of four earning $30,000 may pay no federal income tax, but it pays $4,590 in payroll taxes (including the employerâs share, which economists believe is ultimately paid by the employee in the form of lower wages). Payroll taxes are much bigger than income taxes for most families.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/leonard...s-dont-pay-enough-income-taxes/?partner=obinv
Rick Perry is another big government Republican. The facts are that BOTH parties love to spend money, and when they spend money and much more importantly, pass regulation and regulating bodies, they assist the rich. Big government assists the rich. The rich are the ones who get all the contracts that the government spends supposedly "helping the poor." The rich use the government and their regulating bodies in order to monopolize industries. They use regulations and regulating bodies in order to restrict competition. That's the problem with big government, it helps the rich and not the poor.
You wrote: "Weâre apparently not dismayed that more than half of all Americans have been in a 30-year recession with little or no income growth."
And yet government spending as a portion of the economy or per capita has gone absolutely through the roof over that period. Regulations without end. And yet the poor have had no income growth. Do you really think more of the same will change that? More big government spending and more big government regulations?
The reality is that if you want poor and middle class Americans to move up in the world, it is all about SMALL GOVERNMENT. There has never in the history of man been a period where the common man, poor/middle/upper middle have moved up even remotely close to the extent that the common man moved up during the 19th and early 20th century. This is just a reality, it is fact. The story of history is crystal clear if you do some research and educating yourself. Another simple metric you can use is comparing the difference in income in the old Soviet Untion versus the USA in the 1980's. The difference in income between a factory manager and a worker in the old communist soviet union was something like 50 times greater while in the USA it was 35 times greater. The difference was obviously more incredible when you compare the ultra elite in the old soviet union, which were all government officials. You don't get a bigger government than the old soviet union, yet inequality of income was far more severe and the common man far worse off.
It's just reality that no objective individual can deny. If you want to make the people worse off, eliminate free market capitalism and freedom. If you want to make them best off, eliminate big government and institute free market capitalism and freedom. Forget the fact that it is the moral thing to do, it is also the utilitarian thing to do if your concern is the well being of the poor and middle class.