Why I support the Progressive Income Tax.
Posted: Wednesday, November 17, 2010
by Tex Norman
When I was a little kid I heard someone say that at the Mayo Clinic they charged on a sliding scale. Now this was back in the 1950s so this may not be the case, and if may not have ever been the case, it is just something I heard when I was a kid. But when I heard it, it sounded fair. It just seemed fair to me that rich people could afford to pay more, and that would make up for the poor paying less.
As I grew older I realized that you could not just count on everyone caring about the vulnerable. In school I read Charles Dickenson and his peek into the lives of the profoundly poor, and I was left saying, "This isn't right. Something should be done for people like this." I read The Jungle, which was clearly a socialist propaganda piece, but the depiction of the poor again so shocked and moved me that I was left saying, "Conditions like this must not be allowed to exist."
In my teen years LBJ declared war on poverty, and I remember seeing documentaries on the conditions of the poor and clearly the conditions I thought might be exaggerated in fiction, actually existed.
When I was 15 years old my father decided to be a missionary in the State of Wisconsin. On the moving van he hung a banner that read: We're taking the SIN out of WisconSIN. He was going to convert the Lutheran's and Catholics and snatch their souls from hell. Milwaukee was culture shock to me, especially because we moved into an area that I thought was a ghetto. I had never gone to school with black kids. I had never lived in an area that was not a suburb. And we moved to this low income part of Milwaukee in the middle of the Civil Right's Movement. The first black people I got to know were angry and profoundly poor.
In school, on the first day, the teacher asked us to answer some questions about ourselves and then exchange our papers with someone else so we could "get to know one another." The black male sitting behind me handed me his paper. On the question WHAT CLUBS ARE YOU A MEMBER OF? he wrote: THE HATE WHITE PEOPLE CLUB.
What I saw in 1965 were the worst living conditions I'd ever seen, blatant oppression and unfairness, and seething anger that grew and thrived in the heart of desperation. I developed certain beliefs that now have such a powerful hold on me. Volunteer groups will never address the basic needs of the helpless and disadvantaged. I know this to be true, because, before Medicaid and Food Stamps, the churches and charities never made a ripple in the needs of our poor and afflicted. Reagan said Government was the problem, but I came to believe Government was the only possible solution. I believe that government should work toward ensuring minimum standard of living. I have believed all of my life that civilization exists when all the citizens can live together safely and in peace. If you allow one group to have everything and a larger group to have less than they need to survive, you have a prescription for revolution, not for civilization.
There was a time when I believed that those in need should have those needs met by their families and churches, but eventually I came to realize that the scope of need was so great that voluntary care was never going to be enough to address that need. Today, 1.3 million Americans are legally blind. There are 200,000 Americans in a persistent vegetative state. There are 250,000 Americans with spinal cord injuries. Do you think these people and others in similarly helpless, hopeless states should just be allowed to starve and die, or should the government step in and make sure they have their basic needs met? This one question may help identify where you truly stand on the subject of the progressive income tax.
I have no problem with the progressive income tax because I believe in the word sufficiency. There is a point where a person has all the money he needs. Reaching sufficiency may be far off, but it does exist. Let's take John McCain as an example. I don't actually think of John McCain as super rich. I think he is rich. I even believe John McCain is very rich, but I do not believe McCain is super rich. But during the Presidential campaign we all learned that John McCain owns 6 houses. Billionaires only have two feet, and their wives and kids only have two feet per person. How many shoes do billionaires need before they have all the shoes they need and "they don't need no more?" Perhaps the superrich need 6 or 8 or 12 mansions. Maybe the super rich need three huge luxury yachts, but is there a point where a super rich person has all the shoes and houses and yachts that they need? I believe a rich person has a right to get as rich as their talent will allow. I believe the super rich must be allowed to keep enough money to live the way rich people have always lived, but once they reach the level of super rich, they should be required to pay the most taxes because they have the most wealth. The super rich have more than enough, and the taxes they pay will not diminish their lifestyle in any observable way.
I believe there should be a gap between the rich and everyone else but it should be a gap and not the Grand Canyon. The difference between the super rich and everyone else has been growing and it is now to the point that starts to look obscene. Read A Tale of Two Cities again. When the gap between the super rich and the super poor gets too far apart you invite revolution. I don't think we are there yet. After all the poor and lower middle class are supporting more tax cuts for the supper rich, and they support cutting the safety net for themselves. I don't see how this can last, but it has already lasted longer than I believed was possible.
I want to share some statistics that illustrated just how rich the rich are, and how poor the rest of us are.
• In 2009 the 74 Americans that earned over 50 million dollars combined earn as much money as 19 million of this country's lowest earners. THIS IS NOT 74% IT IS 74 PEOPLE AS IN 1 LESS THAN 75 PEOPLE. 74 Americans = 19 Million Americans.
• In 1976, the top 1 percent of earners in the United States took in 8.9 percent of all income generated in the US. By 2007, the top 1 percent of earners in the United States had risen 23.5 percent of all income generated. .
• The bottom 40 percent of all income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation's wealth.
I favor allowing the rich to be rich. I think they should keep enough of their money to live like the super rich people that they are, but after that, I feel they should pay taxes at a higher rate than lower income people, because they can do so and still live in luxury.
Under Dwight D . Eisenhower the super rich paid taxes at 91%. And the 1950's was the period when the middle class grew, there was full employment we were basically at peace, manufacturing was thriving, union membership and union wages raised the standard of living was high for most white Americans.
I think the fight over taxing the rich would be an easier fight if we only had to fight the Super Rich. If we have to fight the Super Rich, the Pretty Dog-gone Rich, the Rich, and the Somewhat Rich that battle will never succeed. Instead of taxing people who make $250,000 and up, perhaps we should move the number to 1 million. If the highest tax bracket was reserved for people making 1 million and up we might get more middle class support.
While I feel certain I am never going to earn even $75,000 per year, never, ever, not in a million years, there are plenty of American's who believe it might be possible for them to maybe earn $250,000 a year and if they do, they don't want to be knocked down by a big tax obligation.
If people won't voluntarily give money to take adequate care of the vulnerable, and if people use political movements to cut taxes to the bone, then these needs of our civilization are not going to be met. The anti-tax movement seems to think that if taxes are minimized, or eliminated, they would have money in their pocket and still get to live in the America that have right now. That won't happen. If you keep the tax dollars in your pocket, then you have to cut stuff. Some of the cut ideas advocated by Tea Bag Republicans include cutting health care to children and veterans, phasing out Medicare for the elderly, and raising the minimum retirement age. After the budget is cut enough to let these rich keep all of their riches, they will, temporarily, have more money in their pocket, but they will not be living in the America they live in now. And once the standard of living plummets and the citizenry is less educated, less healthy, and less hopeful, well, at that point, those dollars the rich got to keep will start to evaporate.
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Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)I'm truly astonished at the stats you quote. 74 people earned more than 19 million! And people point fingers at Africa because of its wealth disparity.I agree with you that the wealthy should pay more tax because it doesn't affect them. That they're getting tax breaks is beyond ludicrous.You make a good point about inviting revolution. Look at all the violence that's erupting already. It will get worse unless the problem is addressed.Thanks so much for reading and taking the time for you very kind comment. I hope people realize that while I support a progressive income tax that does not mean I think the way we are taxed now is reasonable. The way we tax people has large areas of unfairness. I want a fair method of taxing all of us.
Excellent presentation. A large part of the reason so many Americans are willing to cut their own throats is because one of the main tactics of the Reagan Revolution was to hijack the religious pulpit. A brilliant move that has led many Christians to believe that their influence in government was more important than their economic well being, and that has sustained the conservative movement ever since.I agree with you, and I too trace the economic problems we have now to Saint Reagan. I agree that the faith issues in politics has blinded people to the disparity taxation being advocated by Tea Bag Republicans. It is very difficult to vote to help yourself now, when those religious issues will support you for eternity (on the other side.) Thanks for reading and commenting.
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