Posted on 05/31/2003 6:49:32 AM PDT by truthandlife
No, opposition to the Bush tax cuts by partisan Democrats and media liberals isn't really because they're too large. In fact, they're relatively small. At $350 billion over 10 years, the cut is only about 1 percent of the federal budget and one-quarter of 1 percent of gross domestic product. And the tax cuts don't inordinately favor the rich, per se. They simply favor income tax payers (who happen to be inordinately rich).
Nonetheless, under the new law, a family of four earning $40,000 will be virtually eliminated from the income tax rolls, with its tax bill slashed by 96 percent, from $1,178 all the way down to $45.
A family earning $200,000 will save $3,000, a cut of only 9 percent, while still paying $32,000 in income taxes. Yes, a $3,000 cut is greater than a $1,000 cut, which is why we use percentages to objectively compare dissimilar amounts. People who don't pay income taxes - about half the population - will get no income tax relief. How could they?
Other elements of the tax cut of little interest to the rich but with a big impact on lower- and middle-income taxpayers are the increase in the per-child tax credit of $400 a year and the elimination of the marriage penalty for couples taking the standard deduction. All stockholders will benefit from the cut in tax rates on capital gains and dividends.
In order to understand the real nature of liberal grousing over the scaled-down version of the president's tax plan, one must fathom the mentality of the Democratic Party and its political coalition.
Democrats are opposed to tax cuts for the rich when the economy is booming. They're also opposed to tax cuts for the rich when the economy is sagging. They're opposed when there's a federal budget surplus and when there's a deficit. In other words, Democrats are ideologically opposed to tax cuts for the rich, period.
To Democrats, the income tax exists as a tool to perpetually redistribute income from people who have more to people who have less. Some call this socialism.
If you divide the population into two classes: net tax payers and net tax users, the breakpoint is somewhere around $55,000 in annual income for a family of four (the top 25 percent of taxpayers who pay 84 percent of total income taxes). Below that, the value of government services you receive, directly and indirectly, exceeds what you pay in taxes. Above that, you're a net tax payer. The voter base of the Democratic Party is made up largely of tax users.
In fact, there are relatively few rich people in this country. Only 2 percent of taxpayers earn more than $200,000 a year. While this group accounts for 27 percent of individual income, it already bears 46 percent of the nation's total income tax burden. How much more can you soak them?
So Democrats have to dig deeper. To fund their vision of the welfare state, they're forced to expand their working (but unstated) definition of "rich" to include millions of two-income families with combined incomes between $75,000-$100,000. Some of those families with three kids in college might not think of themselves as rich. And some who make less than that aspire to make more someday, and would like to keep it when they do. Now you understand why Democrats who play the politics of envy are careful to avoid defining "rich" in specific dollar terms.
Democrats don't have a viable economic growth program. Their time-dishonored snake oil is to create the illusion of short-term consumer demand by redistributing income or debt from one economic sphere to another.
In our $10 trillion economy, a few hundred billion of government largess is not the answer. The Bush tax cuts aren't a panacea, but they're a step in the right direction. Their contribution, in the short run, will be to provide immediate incentives for work, savings, investment and job creation that will pay huge dividends in the longer run. That's the path to real economic growth and prosperity.
Others call it "vote buying" to maintain their power. IMHO that is their primary goal. They must have "victims" to make it work.
I would be afraid of the answer to that question, they might just want ALL of it.
It seems to me that I'm paying for that family of six to have more money to go to Disneyland.
I've said this before, I can't wait to retire and start slurping at the public trough. Then everybody can start paying for me. Nuff said.
Some republicans don't believe in tax cuts either, they honestly believe that they should reduce spending on the federal level, take government revenue and re-distribute it back to the local level. They want a smaller federal government too, but they do not believe in giving the money back, they believe in giving it to another level.
That really says it for me! So true.
I think the words "for the rich" give Democrats entirely too much credit. We all know that some of the tax cuts they oppose go to people who clearly are not "rich". They would be opposed to tax cuts for ANYONE if it meant they had to downsize their federal power.
For most of them anything which would tend to cripple capitalism, as high taxes do, is what they are for. If they were really FOR the wealth of the "little people", they would fight for low taxes.
You may be right. The ignorance of the masses is a big problem but if Democrats cared to look just a little bit they would know that reduced taxes increases tax revenue. Everytime taxes are reduced, tax revenue increases. Not knowing that is inexcusable. As far as the "safety net" is concerned, the more tax revenue there is the easier to provide a safety net, if the pols don't throw it away on useless pork. The government should not and cannot provide a safety net without taking your money first and then giving just a little back to you.
Some republicans don't believe in tax cuts either, they honestly believe that they should reduce spending on the federal level, take government revenue and re-distribute it back to the local level.
Again, you may be right but I don't know any Republicans like that although I have heard polls cited that say that. In those cases it depends on how objectively written the questions were. The Republicans I know want both - tax cuts and reduced spending. The government does many things it has no business doing, that are counter productive, and bureaucracy is by nature wasteful.
What you may have observed, as I have, that often when the fed cuts taxes, local or state governments rush in to raise taxes to soak up the newly available money. Usually, these governments are headed by Democrats.
Thats the platform and majority, but Nixon, Ford, even Bush sr, and even Rumsfeld would be anti-tax cut guys who never accepted supply side economics, its part of the reason I get scared when I hear the term "moderate" republican.
You forget some Repubicans who want to cut government debt, so less is spent servicing government debt in future. Again, smaller government is good here too...
You are correct and would be even more so if you just said, "Liberals don't trust Americans.", or free, independent thinkers. Because free, independent thinkers won't do what liberals want them to, they can't be trusted.
The Masses have found that by voting for representatives, whose main campaign promises consist of voting to increase the size of the public trough, they can in effect vote themselves "free stuff".
The fact that they are doing so at the expense of others doesn’t bother them in the least and it is NOT because they are unaware that they are doing so, it is simply because they don’t care that they are subsisting on the sweat of others.
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