posted on December 4, 2002 05:05:28 PM new
December 3, 2002
Hey, Lucky Duckies!
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Carping critics of the conservative movement have been known to say that its economic program consists of little more than tax cuts, tax cuts and more tax cuts. I may even have said that myself. If so, I apologize. Emboldened by the midterm election, key conservative ideologues have now declared their support for tax increases but only for people with low incomes.
The public debut of this idea came, as such things often do, on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal. The page's editors, it seems, are upset that some low-income people pay little or nothing in income taxes. Not, mind you, because of the lost revenue, but because these "lucky duckies," The Journal's term, not mine, might not be feeling a proper hatred for the government.
The Journal considers a hypothetical ducky who earns only $12,000 a year -- some guys have all the luck! --and therefore, according to the editorial, "pays a little less than 4% of income in taxes." Not surprisingly, that statement is a deliberate misrepresentation; the calculation refers only to income taxes. If you include payroll and sales taxes, a worker earning $12,000 probably pays well over 20 percent of income in taxes. But who's counting?
What's interesting, however, is what The Journal finds wrong with this picture: The worker's taxes aren't "enough to get his or her blood boiling with rage."
In case you're wondering what this is about, it's an internal squabble of the right. The Journal is terrified that future tax cuts might include token concessions to ordinary families; it wants to ensure that everything goes to corporations and the wealthy. But the political theory revealed by the editorial policy should be nasty to people with low incomes, lest they have any good feelings about government may explain a lot of what has been happening lately.
For example, House Republicans recently refused to extend unemployment insurance. Their inaction means that later this month more than 800,000 workers will receive Merry Christmas letters from the government, telling them that their benefits have been cut off. This would have been a harsh decision under any circumstances. At a time when the administration says we need further tax cuts to stimulate demand, slashing the incomes of the very households most likely to cut their spending sounds like a lose-lose proposition. But once you realize that pain is good because it makes citizens hate their government, it all makes sense.
An even better example is the failure of Congress to provide adequate funds for the State Children's Health Insurance Program. The details of the legislative maneuvering are complex, but what it comes down to is that conservatives showed no interest in maintaining adequate funding for this highly successful program. The sums involved are not large, by Washington standards. But the results will be dramatic: according to Office of Management and Budget estimates, 900,000 children will lose health insurance over the next three years.
We are, of course, now living in what George W. Bush has called the "era of personal responsibility": if a child chooses to have parents who can't afford health care, that child will have to accept the consequences. But there may also be political calculation involved. Again, the government mustn't do anything good, because then people might not realize that government is bad. Understand?
What do we learn from this catalog of cruelties? We learn that "compassionate conservatism" and "leave no child behind" were empty slogans but while this may have come as a surprise to the faith-based John J. DiIulio, some of us thought it was obvious all along. More important, we learn how relentless and extremist today's conservative movement really is.
Some people moderate Republicans who aren't ready to admit what has happened to their party, and Democrats who think their party can appease the right by making its own promises of smaller government still don't get it. They imagine that at some point the right will decide that it has gotten what it wants.
But the right's ambitions have no limits, and nothing moderates can offer will appease it. Eventually the public, which actually benefits from most of the programs the right is determined to abolish, will figure that out. But how fast voters figure it out depends a lot on whether moderate politicians clearly articulate the issues, or try to escape detection by sounding like conservatives.
posted on December 4, 2002 05:53:39 PM new
Now we have to hate the poor for being poor. I guess it'll give us all someone to dispise and to make ourselves feel better as we Lord it over those less fortunate than ourselves.
And I have been hearing it of late, and reading it here in the RT: hate the poor for being poor. Look down your noses at them. Make them feel like sh1t for being born poor and without opportunity to better themselves.
Twenty percent? While the poor may have to worry about being able to pay the rent of buy enough to eat properly, they certainly do nt enjoy the tax write-offs that the wealthy do.
For instance, take the straight flat-tax of ten-percent taxation on personal income. No one could write anything off - just send in ten percent of your gross earnings per year to the fed and state for your taxes.
This would be a boon to most poor, for sure! At the twenty percent tax rate, they can hardly afford to live. Cutting their tax burden in half would be an unbelievable boon for them!
How about the Top one-percent of income earners in America? Weren't the Mouthpieces for the Republicans and even the Republicans themselves crying about how high a percentage of taxes that they had to pay? At the time, fifty-percent! Image what a boon it would be for them to cut their tax burden down by four-fifths!!
Then, Why, Oh, Why do the top One-Percent do everything in their power to prevent that legislation from going through?
The answer they give: it would cost them too much money!
What? Repeat that again?
It would cost the wealthy too much money!
Confused? You should be if you listen to the tripe coming from the Republican party and their Mouthpieces in the media! The single reason that a Flat-Tax of Ten Percent would cost the very Wealthy MORE is because right now, they pay LESS THAN Ten Percent!
Do you have a better explanation for it than that? If so, let's hear it!
So . . . here they are, paying out all of this "tax" which they get back at the end of the year, sometimes paying NOTHING AT ALL due to write-offs and favorable legislation -- and they have the NERVE to point at those who are the least able to pay taxes in our society and tell THEM to pay MORE???
If you are a Republican, you are sooo full of sh1t!
posted on December 4, 2002 05:55:14 PM new
P.s. Thankx, drkosmos for making this thread. I doubt that any of our staunch Republicans here in the RT will be able to write anything but sheer nonsense to go with the article that you so generously provided to us!
posted on December 4, 2002 06:58:55 PM new
Well, Happy Holidays from George!
While thousands of people have lost their jobs, 800,000 of those people will receive notes of early termination of unemploymnet insurance!
More children will be left behind as 900,000 children will lose health insurance!
Compassionate conservatism is killing us, George. Your era of personality responsibility and political calculation should leave nobody left to love you.
Think about it.
Pain is good?
Peace is war?
Let workers pay the tax so investors can relax?
posted on December 4, 2002 07:28:18 PM new
I just knew that a professor such as yourself would say that. HaHaHa!!!
Helen
The last thing that we need to worry about is taxing the poor.
From the Washington Post...
Prepare yourself for the latest cause of the political right: You are about to hear a great deal about how working Americans at the bottom of the economy are not paying enough in taxes.
I am not making this up. The Wall Street Journal's editorial page always provides important clues about the Next New Thing among conservatives, and there it was last week assailing ''The Non-Taxpaying Class.''
You'd think the tax cutters on that page would be happy with a policy begun under Ronald Reagan to lift the income tax burden from Americans struggling to get by on modest paychecks. But no, it seems that because of our tax structure, the favorite causes of supply-siders --- big tax cuts for wealthy Americans and investors --- are just not popular enough. ''While we would opt for a perfect world in which everybody paid far less in taxes,'' the editors write, ''our increasingly two-tiered tax system is undermining the political consensus for cutting taxes at all.''
The editorial writers are roiled by the fact that the richest Americans, those with incomes of over $500,000 a year, account for 28 percent of total tax revenue, and that the top 5 percent ''coughed up more than half of total tax revenue.'' The Journal contrasts these unfortunate souls with the thriving person who earns $12,000 a year and ends up ''paying a little less than 4 percent of income in taxes.''
Worse yet, various tax credits, mostly aimed at helping families raise kids, further reduce the income tax burden on low-income folks to the point that ''almost 13 percent of all workers have no tax liability and so are indifferent to income tax rates. And that doesn't include another 16.5 million who have some income but don't file at all.''
Then comes this remarkable sentence: ''Who are these lucky duckies?''
''Lucky duckies?''
Now I credit my friends on that editorial page with strong principles and powerful feelings of compassion toward high-end taxpayers. But it will certainly come as news to low-income families getting by on two small paychecks that they are lucky duckies.
And the truth is, low- and middle-income people do pay a lot in taxes --- just not the taxes that supply-side conservatives want to cut.
The Journal's editors make only a passing comment on payroll taxes. But the basic FICA tax takes a much bigger share from middle and low incomes than from large ones. The 6.2 percent tax applies on incomes up to $84,900, meaning that if you make that or less, you pay the full 6.2 percent. But Richard Sims, the policy director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, took the recently published example of a top CEO who earned $122.5 million in 2000 and calculated that his FICA tax rate was 0.000043 percent. Lucky ducky.
Sims also notes that sales and excise taxes hit hardest at low- and middle-income people who have to spend most of their earnings on taxable items, can't save a lot, and don't put much of their money into financial, accounting and legal services, which generally aren't taxed.
According to Sims' figures, the bottom 20 percent of residents in Illinois pay 10.8 percent of their income in sales and excise taxes, compared with only 1.4 percent paid by the top 1 percent of earners. In California, the comparable figures are 7.4 percent and 1.0 percent; in Arizona, 8.1 percent and 1.2 percent; in Colorado, 5.1 percent and 0.8 percent.
Yes, the wealthy are paying more in federal taxes, but for reasons that are good news for the wealthy --- ''largely because they receive a much larger share of the total income in the nation,'' says Isaac Shapiro of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Between 1979 and 1997, the last year for which figures are available, the average after-tax income of the top 1 percent of households, adjusted for inflation, rose by $414,000 --- a 157 percent gain. For the middle fifth of households --- the middle of the middle class --- the comparable gain was 10 percent, or $3,400. The bottom fifth was stagnant.
Over the last generation, the federal government's best deed for the working poor --- it started with Reagan and gained momentum under Bill Clinton --- was to reduce federal taxes on their labor and give low-income families an additional boost with the Earned Income Tax Credit. If the goal of welfare reform is to encourage work, we ought to be thinking of more ways of lifting the fortunes of the poorly paid. That's not class warfare. It's good policy. The last thing we need to worry about is whether poor Americans are taxed too little.
E.J. DIONNE is a columnist for the Washington Post. His column appears occasionally.
posted on December 4, 2002 08:36:39 PM new"According to Sims' figures, the bottom 20 percent of residents in Illinois pay 10.8 percent of their income in sales and excise taxes, compared with only 1.4 percent paid by the top 1 percent of earners. In California, the comparable figures are 7.4 percent and 1.0 percent; in Arizona, 8.1 percent and 1.2 percent; in Colorado, 5.1 percent and 0.8 percent."
Numbers. Numbers, numbers, numbers. Numbers so mind numbing, that is, for Republican supporters, that not a one will read the article, understand it if they do. That they have grown from Conservatives directly to Monsters will soon be all the rage with them. Bash the Poor for being poor! Don't give them the opportunity to get out of it! Don't allow them to get anywhere but where they are - and then look down your nose at them! Yes, that's what it means to be a Republican!
posted on December 4, 2002 08:46:37 PM new
I am amazed at the number of poor working people, especially in the south, for example, who vote Republican without knowing that Republicans will do nothing in their best interest. Republicans rely on this ignorance.
posted on December 4, 2002 11:16:27 PM new
Yes, it is ignorance and laziness. Laziness to think for themselves and they are willing to let others do their thinking for them. Those same poor who voted for Republicans - now they will get paid back for their support. Like the Jews were for Germany, the Poor will be for the Republicans. They will be blamed for EVERYTHING. It won't be until they are rounded up and taken away that they will realize that they stood with the Devil.
posted on December 5, 2002 05:37:54 PM new
Being on of those "lucky duckies" this is a really touchy subject for me. Comparatively speaking, I do pay more than my fair share of taxes. I don't vote Republican because I at least had sense enough to read up on the different parties when I came of voting age back in 1975. What I still have a hard time understanding, though, is that my state, Ohio, voted for Bush. We are long a union state, especially in the northeast where I live. And, I know that the unions did NOT push Bush. I'm wondering now if most Ohioans had leave of their senses. I would like to ask just how many of those staunch Republicans have sent their children to bed hungry at night? How many of them have worked long, hard hours for little pay? I had a good job, then Bush took office and shortly I was laid off because the economy went into the toilet. The "lucky ducky" that I am did not sit around collecting unemployment. I took the first job that was offered to me - at 1-1/2 times a lower salary. I have no benefits. Yes, I blame this on the Republicans. I blame them for the loss of hundreds of jobs and the unfair spread of wealth in this country. Let's have them come to the innercity where I live and spend a few months. THEN if they can still call Americans like me "lucky duckies", then maybe I am afterall.
posted on December 5, 2002 07:15:08 PM new
CBlev65252, The jobs lost are at 3 million,since 9/11 according to CNN.It doesnt help being any more by the numbers,just wanted to let you know you arent alone.
posted on December 5, 2002 07:33:07 PM new
Thanks, junquemama. I know that I am not alone and that does bring some comfort (especially at my age - LOL). I fear most for retirees and those retirees that have lost their benefits. Let's take LTV Steel (Cleveland, OH), for example. Even during their bankruptcy, the "higher ups" were giving themselves huge bonuses WITH the court's blessing while laying off hundred of workers. The retirees have not only had their benefits drastically slashed, but have lost all earned medical as well. The bonuses given to management were well into the millions. A dear friend who spent over 25 years with LTV has lost just about everything he worked those years to earn. Now, with the court's blessing and with the law's assistance, LTV's management is going back to creditors and demanding money back (and money back from employees). It's all perfectly legal. So, now you not only have displaced workers and retirees without benefits, you have scores of vendors who, in essence, provided products and services to LTV for free. This has caused some of the vendors to close shop. It's a domino effect. In the meantime, Bush's family sits comfortably at their ranch in Texas. . .and brother Jed drills stupidity into the heads of Floridians. Sorry, but the name "Jed" reminds me of the Beverly Hillbillys who, as you all remember, made their millions by "drill"ing oil. If you can't laugh, what else can you do?
posted on December 6, 2002 10:04:26 AM new
CBlev65252,You are so right about Jebs name,LOL,I think of the Beverly hillbillys too.
The Companys have turned into robber barons,and their greed knows no limits.You ought to see the mess around here,entire familys are on the streets or living in their cars.It breaks my heart,I cant do anything to help them.
No one can get any help,all the State agencys and places like Salvation Army are full beyond max.
No child will be left behind.....what a crock.
posted on December 6, 2002 11:36:00 AM new
That's what Republican like. That's what Republicans want. Obviously. That's why people who make less than $300,000 a year still support everything that they do -- because they're more MORAL!
Where's the MORALITY in what they're doing to this country and it's citizens?
