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.
In a word, it's Statism, the belief in a benevolent, benign State that has its citizens' best interests at heart, and seeks only to make their lives better. Statism is the religion of the Left. They believe whole-heartedly in it. Statism is the root of Socialism, Communism, Liberal thought, and the Democratic Party. Statism seeks to redress the percieved inequity of some having more than others, through wealth redistribution, taxation, and social programs to give to the "have-nots" what they have taken from the "haves", all in the belief that this will produce happiness and contentment for the citizens. As with all such philosophies, Statism fails to take into account human nature on the whole, but seeks to exploit greed and envy, while ignoring self-respect, the satisfaction of acheivement, and the pride of self-reliance.
Statism is a bankrupt, immoral and Godless system of oppression and enslavement, and the sooner the people realize and reject it, the better off we all will be.
This is absolutely wrong. The Democrats want the income tax as a tool to rule the country. They give you a tax break or govt. contract if you bribe them, or if you are a pal.
The democrats are people who are totally useless in a free market economy. That is they have no skills that anyone of their own free will would pay them for. The only way for them to have any power, self esteem or in a lot of cases to feed their family is to acquire political power. And political power has no power unless they control the taxes and the more and higher taxes, the better it is for them.
The way to acquire money and power in a free market is to provide a good or service that someone else finds useful. The democrats can not stand serving people. They want to order people to do things against their free will. They love big govt. and big govt. needs big taxes.
They try to portray themselves as robin hood. The reality is they are just hoods.
Over at the DUmpster, they have never accepted, nor will accept that supply side works, they will always chalk any and all success to some kind of tax increase somewhere.
Then again, to show you how stupid they are, if a republican raises taxes, they will howl and scream, but if its a democrat, then that person is brave. They also fall into the trap of thinking "R" means bad, even of the person is a obvious RINO, like bloomberg.
You know your a liberal, when you don't trust americans to have guns, but think its okay for countries that hate america to try and develop or own WMD.
Dems in general don't really know economics, they didn't take it in college, and the only eco book they ever read (maybe) was marx. When they see low prices and high profits, they chalk it up to sweatshops, cheap labor, or some kind of evil corporate conspiracy that they can't figure out.
You would think none of them ever cracked a history book in school.LOL!
The ignorance of the masses is a big problem but if Democrats cared to look just a little bit they would know that reduced tax [rates] increases tax revenue. Everytime tax [rates] are reduced, tax revenue increases. Not knowing that is inexcusable. [Of course they know that; they just choose to ignore it.]
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