The ‘Tax the Rich!’ Reflex

The rich do not pay any taxes. They offshore their wealth to secret overseas bank accounts. If anything, we need to reinstate the 70-94% tax brackets, tax capital gains as regular income and reverse all tax cuts for the wealthy & corporations since the post-WW2 boom to pay off the national debt caused by tax cuts for the wealthy & corporations. These upper-income tax brackets are historically proven to work to get America debt-free. Raise their taxes! Restore America to debt-free status!

Mr. Will and his right wing bias gets in the way again of the balanced perspective. How is the GOP and the right-wing policy of giving tax break to the rich and the powerful a better policy than the current progressive taxation. We have the near disaster very deep recession under this policy. And looking back into our modern history, the GOP myth of glorious Reagan administration on the same policy had two recessions. Or let me simplify, show me a country that's progressive and thriving that's not into progressive tax program and I'll believe you.

Scuromondo is right on. We are a society. We should be caring more for others. I'm tired of rich people saying that they don't want to pay for the lazy people out there. But why is it that these same rich people keep on getting richer even when taxes are increased (not counting recessions)? Poor people are not greedy. They don't need to have the flashy boats, expensive cars, giant homes, or trips around the world in private jets. What do they want? A chance to live. That should be something that everyone in America should have. They want health care that works. They need it because these big corporations that make all this money are giving crappy food that makes them sick. Why do the poor buy it? Because they are very inexpensive. Milk is $1.99 a gallon right now, but organic milk is three times that. How can they afford to get that? Same goes with most other food. Going to McDonald's is a lot cheaper than buying the healthy alternatives. And what about the credit card or bank loans, poor people are being charged huge interest rates that only the rich could afford, but the rich get the low fees. These are just small examples of how these rich people become richer off these poor people. Not all, mind you. There are many that work hard and are doing really good things, but those are usually the people that don't mind paying these taxes. Now, $350,000 is on the low end of rich people, but if you don't want to pay more taxes, then don't be so rich ... it's like movie stars who want more privacy.

George, please run for office so we can find out what YOUR plan is for reforming healthcare. Until then, this world is changing rapidly and you continue to make old and outdated aruguments that are irrelvant to the issues at hand. For example, you lean heavily on the concept of meritocracy, which most Americans favor in our work lives, however, you don't explain how having financial institutions that are "too big to fail" fits into that model and you don't accouont for income inequality that is due to that fact and, in some cases, greed, dishonesty, fraud, corruption, and antiquated regulatory frameworks, among other factors. Also, regarding meritocracy, you fail to take heed of the newer global issues of educational failure and health system failure that have caused our labor force to experience a new global level of competiton that only we, as a nation, can offset with reforms here at home. As Tom Friedman notes, the world truly is flat now for most of our economic activity.

In the future, I hope your editors require you to both deal with the realities of 2009 and to articulate and defend an alternative solution when criticizing. Otherwise, you're just another nutty, screaming ideologue preaching to the converted, left or right, in the clothing of a prefessional journalist. Newsweek might as well hire Palin for your spot and boost circulation. George, looks like another call strike three!

Here is another interesting point to consider. Today's society is becoming more and more focused upon the rare high-value contributions of the talented few, to the ever-increasing detriment of those who possess none of these talents. We are in effect, devaluing the contributions of talents with a percieved over-supply, (e.g. strong back, good with your hands, etc) that make up the potential contributions of the largest segment of society. Not only are we paying the wealthy ever-increasing rewards for their efforts, we are also decreasing what we will pay for what we deem less valuable contributions. Most of those without rare high-value contribution potential lack the capacity to raise their productivity sufficiently to offset the overall devaluation of the skills they offer society. Without some form of wealth redistribution, the vast majority of society's members will be unable to market their low-value skills for enough money to allow anything approaching a middle-class lifestyle. This will make downward-mobility the most powerful force in capitalistic society for the foreseeable future.

Tax cuts for the rich did not create our national debt. Anyone who thinks that way is blinded by liberalism. The national debt was created by the government spending more then it earns.....period. Countless social programs of every kind, for everything and everyone have pushed this country to its current level of debt. People have their hands out pointing to everything and everyone else as the cause for their problems.

Your dependance on government social programs only serves to make you more dependant on the government, which then has more control over you life. Expecting the government to fix everything that hasn't gone right in your life is just stupid. And the people that call for the government to step in and redistribute the wealth of america equally to everyone are living in the wrong country.

You want redistribution of wealth, move to a country that has socialism as its core econimic plan. If it is implimented here we will have to rename this country the "U-NITED S-TATES S-OCIALIST R-EPUBLIC"

Start taking responsibility for your own life and make it better yourself, stop waiting and hoping someone or something else will do it for you. Once the government has control over your life they're not likely to give it back.

I doubt the tax the rich part of the healthcare bill will fly. In fact I don't think much of anything of the Obama healthcare plan will fly. He will meet his Waterloo on that issue and it will be downhill for him from that point on! I'm happy to see him or any liberal for that matter fail. But the failure will be from the issue itself, not so much his attempt to tackle it. The same thing happened to Hillary when she tried her hand at it.

Healthcare reform is an intractable issue. At heart Americans just don't want universal healthcare. The Europeans and the Canadians, all half baked socialists, want it but we don't. We expect the free market to deal wiht the issue and for the most part it does it pretty well. There is nothing wrong with the govt offering some sort of subsidized health insurance to the working poor but that is as far as any new healthcare initiative should go. As far as the main part of our healthcare system goes, if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

"But people with only one idea really have no idea; they have only a mental default position." - George Will

As in... "Tax Cuts! We need more Tax Cuts!" - the GOP's answer to every imaginable problem on the planet.

Consider: We just celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Apollo Moon landing... probably the most impressive achievement yet of our species. The program was implemented at the behest of a Democratic president (Kennedy). Certainly "beating the Soviets" was probably the main impetus behind the idea at the time, but the results speak for themselves. There are some programs that are just too expensive for "the private sector" to finance in the gestation phase. The space program cost us less than one-half of one percent of GDP at the time. Not just the USA, but the world has benefited greatly by many of the technological offshoots of the space program (computer refinements, communication satellites, teflon, etc.). A pretty good return on investment, I'd say.

Was the space program absolutely necessary in the 1960's? Probably not. But if we only were to constantly focus only on cutting taxes, there's no way it would have happened at all. And that would be a shame.

One other thought: Obama's proposed idea of repealing the Bush tax cuts would take us back to Clinton's top bracket of 39.6% vs. 35% today. The US economy performed a LOT better in the 1990's (under the 39.6% top rate) than it has in this decade (with the 35% top rate). As for the investor class that Mr. Will references, the stock market has fared better under the Dems vs. the GOP since the federal income tax was introduced in 1913. And yes, generally under higher tax rates! In fact, according to Ibbotson, if you contrast the market's starting point vs. ending value over the course of all of the administrations since 1913, it has not been down in any of the seven Democratic president's terms. Under the Republican president's terms, the market has been down three times out of nine.

#1 -- so much for the "liberal media bias" when Newsweek is promoting George Will's upper class screed.
#2 -- "Overtaxing"?!?! The table has been tilted in favor of the rich, with more and more of the wealth concentrated in fewer and fewer of the people, while the middle class sinks and has no idea why (thanks to people like George Will).
#3 -- The rich have done a great job in selling the idea that they pass up good investment opportunities because of their lack of resources Interest rates are very low. The rich are already taking advantage of good investment opportunities. If we arrange for them to have even more money, then they'd invest in bad businesses to generate more jobs? They didn't get rich by being that stupid. It's like the idea that raising taxes on retail establishments forces them to raise prices. Does anyone really think they're not already charging whatever prices are the most profitable (balancing profit margin and sales volume)? Lower tax rates for the rich just makes them richer, it doesn't make them invest in anything they aren't already investing in.

Fundamentally, it really doesn't matter if taxing the rich will hurt the economy or not. Envying the wealthy and using the government to confiscate their money is IMMORAL. If you want more money, go out and work for it yourself!