Punish the rich, or punish the poor. People say it's not a zero-sum game, but they are essentially lying. If rich people pay less taxes, and you are not rich, you will pay more sooner or later. That's how it works.
Rich people were arguably being punished by the tax structure that existed prior to the Reagan administration. The pendulum has swung absurdly far in the other direction since then, and conservatives unabashedly speak now of wanting poor people to get soaked even more, ostensibly with the idea that they'll advocate smaller government then. (The favored rhetorical trick is to point out that destitute "lucky duckies" don't pay any income tax, as if that were the only kind of tax.)
Somehow this method of shrinking the government is better than, you know, actually just shrinking the government, probably because the shrinking part takes place in some unspecified future in which somebody else makes the hard decisions. Kind of like how the Republicans used to want to balance the budget by passing a constitutional amendment requiring people to magically balance the budget. Strange how you don't hear much about that any more.
Those who call this kind of talk "class warfare" are just trying to prevent retaliation for first strikes.
And that is my liberal soapbox speech for the week.
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syntheid
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Date: 2004-01-07 06:14 am (UTC)Rich people were arguably being punished by the tax structure that existed prior to the Reagan administration. The pendulum has swung absurdly far in the other direction since then, and conservatives unabashedly speak now of wanting poor people to get soaked even more, ostensibly with the idea that they'll advocate smaller government then. (The favored rhetorical trick is to point out that destitute "lucky duckies" don't pay any income tax, as if that were the only kind of tax.)
Somehow this method of shrinking the government is better than, you know, actually just shrinking the government, probably because the shrinking part takes place in some unspecified future in which somebody else makes the hard decisions. Kind of like how the Republicans used to want to balance the budget by passing a constitutional amendment requiring people to magically balance the budget. Strange how you don't hear much about that any more.
Those who call this kind of talk "class warfare" are just trying to prevent retaliation for first strikes.
And that is my liberal soapbox speech for the week.