Do taxes = communism?
Monday, November 10, 2008
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June 1988 – The Soviet Empire is weakening. Hopefully in 20 years we will stop hearing our politicians throwing around accusations of communism and socialism every time tax policies are tweaked.
November 2008 – Well damn. Here we are, STILL calling each other names that might have been scary 50 years ago! Isn’t this childish? What gives?
Practically every time there’s talk of changing our tax structure so the bottom half doesn’t get completely reamed, our blood-eating red-meat friends in the South, Midwest and the Rocky Mountains (I’m looking at you, Utah) start screaming murder. This time, they even got a couple of pet names and a cheerleader to help them along.
Joe the Plumber (or Sam not-the-plumber if you want to get technical) was the first person during the presidential campaign to mainstream the use of socialism as a way of describing Barack Obama’s proposed tax changes. But is it really?
While we were all busy dusting off our duck-and-cover era fear of social equality, Obama was being called “Barack the wealth spreader,” and “redistributioner-in-chief” by the Republican vice-presidential and presidential candidates respectively, and a lot worse by some members of their supporters.
But here’s the thing: taxes in and of themselves redistribute wealth! It seems obvious, but maybe it was overlooked that to pay for Medicare, we have to redistribute wealth from 25-year-olds to pay for a 75-year-olds’ medicine. Perhaps we didn’t notice that we pay property taxes that redistribute our earnings to fund the construction of parks, roads and the like. Nobody seems to have a problem with that, and they shouldn’t.
The public dialogue regarding taxes needs to change from equating taxes with scariness to engaging in a mature conversation about what services we feel are a priority for our wellbeing and how we’re going to end up paying for them. It’s not that complicated.
But it is really funny to see big fat hypocrites acting as legions for the preservation of public sanctity through eliminating taxes while they are proposing a ton of their own initiatives that would have to be paid for somehow. Oh, and Sarah Palin is popular mainly because she gave every citizen of Alaska a bigger cut of profits from oil companies whose money she seems not to have a hard time “spreading.” Oh, and Ronald Reagan is widely known for expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, where poor families actually get money back from the government instead of having to pay for it.
Looks like we’re all a bunch of rotten socialists, right?
No, we just have an idea that, here in America, pretty much everyone willing to work their ass off should have an opportunity so succeed, and those who can’t (due to illness, injury or age) shouldn’t be thrown to the gutter to rot. That seems like a pretty simple thing to accomplish in a nation as wealthy as ours, but somehow we keep getting bumped off track even when influential, well-known politicians pledge to support those who need it most.
I guess people like me will just have to work hard and earn our raises… oh wait, our income isn’t rising as fast as inflation. But my boss sure has a nice car. Well, I guess I’ll have to quit and find a job that pays more… oh wait, they’re all taken. And even the people who took them are being fired. Guess I’ll just have to go to school and earn a degree that will help me out a bit… crap, I can’t afford school. Or books. Or rent. Looks like I’ll have to take out a loan to pay for it all… oh, the credit markets dried up due to disastrous economic policies that provided no safeguards to prevent this type of thing from happening. Good thing I can always move to Alaska and grab a cut of that sweet, sweet oil money. Thanks, comrade Palin!
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