"Tax hikes destroy jobs" --Speaker of the House John Boehner

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the richest 10% of Americans pay half of all taxes.

Republicans cite this all the time.

They don't add this fact from the same source:

The richest 10% of Americans get 40% of all American income.

Which means that they only pay a little more on their income than do the other 90%. So we have nearly a flat tax, in effect.


And it means the constant harping on that 10% pay 50% is true but it's a lie when you say it and imply that everyone else is getting a free ride. We aren't. We're just getting soaked by the unquenchable greed of the richest.

Oh, and if "tax hikes destroy jobs," then tax cuts create jobs, right? One can't be true without the other.
Well, the Bush Era was historically lousy in jobs creation as corporate America closed our plants and shipped the jobs to China etc., even as taxes on the rich sank to historic lows.

But watch the face of a self-styled conservative when you tell them this. Momentary consternation, followed by challenging your facts, then discounting the source, whatever it is--even, as in this case, the nonpartisan CBO that Republicans cite constantly when a report favors their side--or can be cherrypicked to seem so.

Their commitment is to their ideology, not the truth.

I should add that Democrats have their sacred cows too of course. They just aren't trying to wreck our country quite as vigorously as the GOP is right now.

"but the top earners pay most of the taxes today--so you shouldn't raise their rates"

Every time anyone brings up the T word, Republican shills promptly quote the bogus statistic that the rich pay most of the taxes now, so how dare you propose socialist income redistribution?

First, they don't--you only get that stat by only considering the federal income tax--not state and local taxes, and not all those little items that are withheld from workers' paychecks. When you put everything together it turns out that most Americans pay a similar % of taxes. That is, we actually have a flat tax--we just get it from sleight of hand and loopholes and of course the corporate gains tax that lets billionaires pay lower taxes than their secretaries.

Second, they pay "so much" taxes because they have grabbed so much of America's economic output for themselves. From the end of WWII into the 1970s, big corporation CEOs got about 20X what their peons earned. Now it's over 400X--unlike that of any other rich country, but similar to countries like Mexico and Russia.

That's the "income redistribution" and "class war" that has been going on since Reagan's presidency.

Lastly, the Republican's tax theology is supported by bullhorning. For example, today on Fox News Sunday they had a Democratic and Republican junior Congressman on debate taxation. Fair enough. Only the moderator allowed the the Republican Congressman to constantly interrupt and talk over the Democratic Congressman, sometimes even double-teaming her.

So Anti-Tax Theology  is reinforced in the public forums by rhetorical dirty tricks.

Opposing taxes is not conservative--it's just shilling for the billionairocracy

No one wants to pay more taxes than is their fair share of supporting the government that manages so much for us.

But when the Republican leaders say--and they say this daily--that the taxes we pay are "our" money, implying that the government is robbing us--that's only the way the billionaires see it. They don't need social services. They don't need infrastructure. They don't even need national defense, except as a revenue source. So from their point of view of course it's unnecessary.

The libertarian position on taxes is exactly the billionaires' position, and the Republican Party has adopted it. At least when they're out of power. Then when they're in power they spend like drunken sailors and tax the future to pay for it. They say they're starving the beast, but that's ridiculous--especially since the overall size of governments expands under Republican rule. They just lie about it. What they're doing is another anti-conservative ploy: they're borrowing.

And as long as we expect our roads and sewers and national security and street lights to work--as long as we expect cops to come if we need them and dial 911--as long as we expect 911 to work--the taxes we pay are what we owe the provider of those services for services already rendered.

I was raised to believe "conservative" was synonymous with "responsible." Accepting goods and services and then not wanting to pay for them is welshing on a bargain.

And the billionaires owe it too, especially considering how much of the fruits of our labor they now keep for themselves--vastly more than when I was a kid.

There are unfair taxes and there is government inefficiency and waste. But that's an excuse for government reform, not for trying to weasel out of paying your fair share.

If you don't like it, prove it by going off the grid or by emigrating. Don't accept all those goods and services and then pretend "your" money is all yours. That just sounds like an 8 year old boy who accepts all that his family does for him as his entitlement and then refuses to do his chores.

What's wrong with wanting smaller taxes and government?

Smaller taxes and government are the keystones of American conservatism, right?

Many, many Americans certainly agree. It's practically in our DNA. At the time of the Founding Fathers most Americans were farmers, and were practically self-sufficient except for luxuries.

We needed government to defend us from military attack from abroad (or from Indians). We didn't want King George ordering us around from the other side of the Atlantic.

Okay, fine. And we certainly don't want a gigantic Soviet-style bureacracy telling us where to scratch and forcing our neighbors to spy on us (and us on them). And making us slaves to the State, with any initiative squelched, like the situation today in, say, North Korea.

So--what's the right balance today?

Isn't it reasonable to say that we need enough government to protect us against whoever and whatever seriously threatens us, and to maintain our competitiveness in the global economy, and no more?

Now--does that include the postal service? If it's run as a for-profit enterprise, it will make sense to cut out rural deliveries nationwide, and only deliver mail where there's enough volume to make it profitable--mainly in urban areas.

I live in an urban area, so my ox wouldn't be gored if we did that, but I'm willing to pay a bit extra for postage stamps in order to maintain truly nationwide service. I've been in countries where mail service is iffy at best. They're third world countries. I'd prefer not to live in a third world country.

So what else do we need (besides enough military to defend us against invasion)?

Well, suppose you discover that you can light your tapwater on fire. (I've seen footage of this.) And you discover that it's almost certainly because of frakking nearby. Frakking is a natural gas drilling procedure that runs a line underground, then pumps a mixture of water and toxic chemicals through it at high pressure, fracturing the surrounding rock and releasing the natural gas. Unfortunately the process can also pollute the water table--hence the flammable tapwater.

And then you discover that your state legislature passed a law exempting natural gas producers from getting prosecuted--or sued--for contaminating water tables with frakking.

And that this has being going on in many of the 35 states where frakking is being done.

That's where you need an entity as powerful as the natural gas producers who have outsourced their problems to you--and nothing but the national government can do that.

The Framers didn't envision natural gas producers harming thousands of rural homeowners. But they did envision the country having needs they couldn't envision. So they made the Constitution more like a stem cell than like a whole creature--the Constitution's brevity makes it flexible enough to enable government to tackle unforeseen threats like this.

Now of course the more government you have, the more taxes you get.

But taxes don't matter.

What I mean is that your income, your safety, and your discretionary purchasing power are what matter. If I pay a lot of taxes and have X amount of discretionary income, or pay a lot less taxes but have to buy more necessities--like health insurance--and have Y amount of discretionary income, and Y is less than X, I'd be better off paying more taxes and less of the rest.

This isn't an argument for the dreaded Welfare State that maintains an entire class of people on the dole for all their lives.

But without a powerful federal government that provides reasonable regulation of the activities of the rich and powerful, what you get--inevitably--is a class of people who live off you all their lives--the hyper-rich who take advantage of lack of government regulation to hitch a ride on the tax dollar gravy train, and then take your pocketbook for much, much more of a ride than all the inner city welfare bums in the country put together.

As Wall Street's "Masters of the Universe" recently demonstrated.

And you should consider the fact that such "Masters of the Universe" ceaselessly lobby Congress and propagandize the American public to remove all business regulations, working on you to think as if you're a farmer in 18th century America and "government" = King George.

Bottom line: there is always power. If government wields less power, be totally assured that someone else will grab whatever power the government surrendered, and often use it against you.

It's a big, complex world today. Russian criminal rings probe the Internet and the e-mailverse nonstop, trying to steal your ID and every cent you have. Illegal aliens may be using your Social Security number right now, and you might not discover the problem until you retire and try to start collecting Social Security. Today, here in Calfornia, the giant power utility Pacific Gas & Electric has placed an initiative on our ballot with the sole purpose of making it vastly more difficult for municipalities to stop using PG&E--and backing it up with a saturation ad campaign.

I realize you may have had a bad experience with surly, indifferent government employees (who may not evens peak intelligible English) the last time you went to the Post Office or the Department of Motor Vehicles.

On the other hand, I remember the time my spouse had to choose between 10 days in the hospital or 10 days of anticoagulant shots, and we chose the latter, in part to save our healthcare provider the enormous cost of that hospitalization--which they would have been on the hook for--and yet they refused to pay the $1,500 the shots cost...because they could get away with it, and it helped their bottom line.

Nongovernmental entities are trying to rob you or shortchange you or overcharge you or even kill you (by refusing to pay for needed medical care) all the time, even right under you nose.

So when all those dangers vanish, I'll get on the "small government/taxes" bandwagon.

In other words, Jefferson was a nice guy, and really smart--but Hamilton was more correct, in the long run.