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Huffington Post Accidentally Destroys The Left's Entire 'Tax Fairness' Argument
JOHN MERLINE 5:19 PM ET
The left-leaning (to put it politely) Huffington Post website makes a convincing case for the Republicans' plans to cut taxes.
In an article headlined 'That GOP 'Middle Class' Tax Cut Might Be a Big Fat Trojan Horse For The Rich," a Huffington Post writer set out to attack Republican tax-cutting plans.
There's nothing new about decrying tax cuts as giveaways to the rich. Democrats spent years trashing President Bush's tax cuts on those grounds, and the first chance President Obama had, he raised the top tax rates.
But in making his case, Huffington Post senior White House correspondent S. V. Date inadvertently reveals...
...the infamous Top 1% — you know, the folks who don't pay their "fair share" — actually pay 25% of all federal taxes.
The top 20%, Date goes on, pay 69% of all federal taxes. The middle 20? They pick up just 9% of the tax bill.
What's more, Date notes that the average federal tax rate has dropped significantly for every group over the past 30 years — except the wealthy.
"The poorest 20% saw their average federal tax rate drop from 8.7% in 1983 to 3.3% in 2013,"...
...a tiny fraction of the country pays the vast bulk of the tax bill, while more than 40% pay nothing. Then, whenever Republicans talk about tax cuts, Democrats scream that all the benefits go to the rich.
This isn't an argument against tax cuts. After all, the people paying the bulk of the tax load also tend to be the people who make the investments that grow the economy, create jobs and increase opportunities for everyone. Lower their taxes and they will have more money to invest...
Considering that 47% of Americans don't earn enough to pay taxes, the percentage of the total tax bill paid by the wealthy is a pointless figure.
If Warren Buffet's secretary pays 15% of his/her income in taxes, why should Warren pay a lower percentage, when he makes far more than her? Warren is able to use far more deductions than his secretary, and thereby reduce his taxable income substantially, and THEN he pays a lower percentage than she does. So Warren gets more deductions, more tax breaks and a lower rate.
Prior to Reagans amendments to the tax code in the 1980s, all but the poorest in American society had some savings and equity. Since Reagan reduced taxes for the wealthy, wealth and equity has been steadily rising to the top, first at the expense of the working class as their wages stagnated, and until last year, at the expense of the working class.
To say that the wealthy haven't had a tax cut in 20 years, well 20 years ago was the last time the country had a balanced budget, and as far as I'm concerned NOBODY gets a tax cut until that ******* deficit is wiped out, and not before. Otherwise, the wealthy are funding their wages and their wars on the backs of the working class and the middle class. Republicans love to spend money on war, well you want to got to war, stop kicking the costs down the road and start paying for your wars, and that includes the VA to take care of the battered and the broken for the rest of their lives.