A Fair Tax
by
David Schlecht
What is a fair tax?
I’m not surprised when I hear the rich crying and whining about having to pay their fair share. After all, our broken predatory capitalist system requires people to be immoral and predatory to be successful and we wouldn’t expect anything less when it comes to paying back for the wealth this country has given them. What, then, is fair?
Let’s take the plight of the poverty stricken worker, making some CEO rich while she raises her family in poverty. When she goes to the grocery store, she pays sales tax, usually in the range of 7-10%. In other words, this country is taking food off the tables of the poor in order to pay taxes. Another way to look at this is to say that 100% of the poor working mother’s discretionary spending (money she doesn’t need to survive) is spent on taxes. The middle class has a negative savings rate. In other words, all the middle class’ money is going to pay for their dwindling “American Dream”. How much of their discretionary spending is eaten up in taxes? Obviously 100%. This is immoral for so many reasons. How can a society tax their people to death? Shame on us.
Okay, so our government, pandering to the rich, have decided that it’s okay to tax people 100% of their discretionary income. Well, then that means 100% of what the rich make, after paying for a meager middle class life style, should be taxed. But, no, instead the poor and middle class are paying the taxes for the rich. The uber rich are paying about 10% of their discretionary income in taxes while the rest of the country is paying 100%.
If we’re in agreement that we don’t want to tax anyone 100% then it should be pretty obvious that the only moral solution is to levy taxes proportionate to the amount of discretionary income. This is called a progressive tax. In other words, the tax progresses up as the income goes up.
Back in the days when this country used to function successfully, we had a top marginal tax rate of over 90% on the uber rich. Isn’t it time we went back there? Isn’t it the moral thing to do?
Sales taxes, on the other hand, are regressive. They affect the poor considerably more than the rich. Fuel taxes affect the poor disproportionately. Property taxes should be more progressive, with low cost primary homes paying nothing in tax but million-dollar mansions pay a high percentage.
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Selling America to the Highest Bidder
Thursday, January 21st, 2010Selling America to the Highest Bidder
by
David Schlecht
A letter to my readers…
Dear Friends,
If you’ve been paying attention to the news today, you have heard about the horrific ruling by the Supreme Court. With this ruling, they have perpetrated the greatest attack on our country that we have witnessed in our lifetimes. With this ruling, corporations (including international corporations) have the right to buy our political races and nothing will stand in their way.
Take as an example, the 2008 presidential elections. Between the two leading candidates, they spent $1.1 billion in advertising, and that’s a record expenditure. Divide that by a four year term and it’s about $270 million per year.
This year, the bankers on Wall Street received over $30 billion in bonuses alone, not including regular income. This means they could spend just one tenth of one year’s bonus and completely drown out everything all other candidates can say. This is not free speech. This is selling our country down the toilet to the richest and most ruthless and most unethical buyers. Just think what the oil companies will do. Three billion dollars in deceptive campaign marketing and they can realize hundreds of billions in subsidies. There’s no better return on investment than buying a politician or two.
If you think business has too much control over our government now, just wait and see what this brings.
This is not a Republican issue or a Democratic issue or a conservative issue or a liberal issue, it’s an American issue. The only way we can repeal this is if we work together.
I signed this petition and encourage everyone to do the same and then to forward this message off to everyone you know.
It’s not too late but it soon will be. You and I are the only hope America has of surviving this attack.
-David
This morning, I watched five Supreme Court Justices stab at the heart of democracy, our electoral system.
They overturned over 100 years of statute and precedent, and declared that corporations can spend all the money that they want to buy elections. In fact, these five men in robes declared that they have a constitutional right to do so.
I was there. I saw it. And one seat away was Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who could barely contain his glee.
If you signed our petition, you were there, too. Right in the courtroom. Because your petitions were with me, and I delivered them to the Supreme Court. If you signed our petition, you were one of almost 15,000 people who told these judges that “we cannot have a government that is bought and paid for by huge multinational corporations.”
And now, we have to fight. We have introduced six bills to prevent the sale of our government to the highest bidder. The “Save Our Democracy” package must pass. As Lincoln said in his first inaugural address, the war is forced upon us. And if we fail, then as I said yesterday, “you can kiss your country goodbye.”
Forward this message to your friends now. Tell them to sign the petition at SaveDemocracy.net to support the “Save Our Democracy” package now.
Regards,
Alan Grayson
Member of Congress
Tags: capitalism, corporate welfare, rich
Posted in Politics | 12 Comments »