How to get intelligent people to agree to stupid things
Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under Clinton, has been making commenataries on NPR. The more I hear from him, the more I admire him. He said something the other day I found fascinating. He rattled off a few facts in support of his proposition that the correct path for dealing with our huge deficit is to roll-back the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy.
Here's an excerpt: "as a percentage of the total economy, federal spending is not high by historic standards. Even if you include the current expense of going to war, federal outlays as a proportion of the gross national product are now slightly below their average over the past two decades. It's not federal spending that's out of whack. What's really responsible for the giant deficits is found on the revenue side of the ledger. As a percentage of the total economy, tax revenues are plunging. We haven't seen revenues this low, as measured against the total economy, in half a century.
"Here's where things get really interesting. Take a close look at government revenues. Payments coming into government from payroll taxes -- which are paid mostly by America's huge middle class -- are at an historic high. But look at what's being collected from income and corporate taxes, and measured against the economy as a whole you get the smallest take in over sixty years. And, of course, income taxes and corporate taxes come mainly from people earning over $200,000 a year.
"In other words, the federal deficit has gone up mainly because wealthier Americans are paying less in taxes. If they paid at the same rate they paid even five years ago, we wouldn't be in this pickle. We wouldn't have such a huge federal deficit and we wouldn't be in such deep hock to foreigners."
So in a nutshell, he's saying that taxes on the wealthy and corporations are extremely low, while taxes on the middle class are extremely high.
Quite aside from the proposition that the responsible way of handling our deficits is to get rid of those tax cuts for the wealthy, I think these facts Reich mentioned lead to another conclusion. I think these facts tend to show Bush WANTS and NEEDS taxes on the middle class to be high. How on earth can he get a majority of Americans to back his proposals to cut taxes for the wealthy while also cutting extremely popular social programs? By keeping the middle class in pain. By keeping taxes on the middle class high, most Americans will logically assume that taxes are too high across the board. People in the middle class will have a gut reaction against any talk of raising taxes on anyone. "I am already paying too much, so don't raise taxes any more." So we are lead to the the conclusion, which now seems inevitable, that we HAVE to cut social programs. We think taxes are too high, and we have a modicum of love for our children and grandchildren and don't want to burden them with our deficits, so we think the only alternative is to cut programs.
Here's an excerpt: "as a percentage of the total economy, federal spending is not high by historic standards. Even if you include the current expense of going to war, federal outlays as a proportion of the gross national product are now slightly below their average over the past two decades. It's not federal spending that's out of whack. What's really responsible for the giant deficits is found on the revenue side of the ledger. As a percentage of the total economy, tax revenues are plunging. We haven't seen revenues this low, as measured against the total economy, in half a century.
"Here's where things get really interesting. Take a close look at government revenues. Payments coming into government from payroll taxes -- which are paid mostly by America's huge middle class -- are at an historic high. But look at what's being collected from income and corporate taxes, and measured against the economy as a whole you get the smallest take in over sixty years. And, of course, income taxes and corporate taxes come mainly from people earning over $200,000 a year.
"In other words, the federal deficit has gone up mainly because wealthier Americans are paying less in taxes. If they paid at the same rate they paid even five years ago, we wouldn't be in this pickle. We wouldn't have such a huge federal deficit and we wouldn't be in such deep hock to foreigners."
So in a nutshell, he's saying that taxes on the wealthy and corporations are extremely low, while taxes on the middle class are extremely high.
Quite aside from the proposition that the responsible way of handling our deficits is to get rid of those tax cuts for the wealthy, I think these facts Reich mentioned lead to another conclusion. I think these facts tend to show Bush WANTS and NEEDS taxes on the middle class to be high. How on earth can he get a majority of Americans to back his proposals to cut taxes for the wealthy while also cutting extremely popular social programs? By keeping the middle class in pain. By keeping taxes on the middle class high, most Americans will logically assume that taxes are too high across the board. People in the middle class will have a gut reaction against any talk of raising taxes on anyone. "I am already paying too much, so don't raise taxes any more." So we are lead to the the conclusion, which now seems inevitable, that we HAVE to cut social programs. We think taxes are too high, and we have a modicum of love for our children and grandchildren and don't want to burden them with our deficits, so we think the only alternative is to cut programs.
posted by Charles S. Russell at 2:36 PM
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