“...The “rich” already DO pay more taxes. A LOT more, in fact....”
And so do most Americans, but not enough to pay for the over-arching welfare state that the majority of American voters seem to prefer. I’m with Mark Steyn. If the U.S. wants a Canadian-style welfare state (total government spending as a percentage of GDP is only 1% less in the U.S. than Canada)it must be willing to pay for it. Only when the Sheeple learn good and hard how much a Euro-socialist welfare costs will they respond to counter-conservative arguments.
We lost the last election round for a host of reasons but none so great as the government’s ability to spend manically while keeping the taxpayers immune from its effects through debt accumulation and central bank money printing. Left to their own devices, the voters will happily allow this arrangement to continue until it collapses under its own weight. Don’t blame John Boehner for this. It’s merely a fact of human nature.
It is not “conservative” in my mind to persist in the delusion that the people will vote to reduce the size of a government that they are not paying for, or at least not enough for. To do so would make us complicit in the demise of this great republic out of some mis-guided attraction of “low” taxes. That battle is lost. Let’s go over the cliff; achieve some real spending cuts (yes including the Pentagon);compell everyone to feed Leviathon and then work to convince them to slay him.
You can’t sell the low-tax, small government soap if your constumers are being offered low-tax, big-government soap by your competitors. Now the competition is offering to raise the price of its soap if we simply move aside and let them go over the cliff. I SAY WE SHOULD STEP ASIDE AND LET THEM PROCEED LIKE THE LEMMINGS THEY ARE.
I understand what you’re saying; however, I’d be a lot more well-disposed to letting the lemmings rush to the river if they didn’t insist on taking me with them.
“..The “rich” already DO pay more taxes. A LOT more, in fact....”
I think what people don’t like is rich people paying a lower tax rate than middle class people. The average tax rate for the 400 richest families in the US in 2011 was 19%, which is lower than what a wager earner making $100,000 a year pays. Hard to explain why this ia fair.