September 16, 2012
Half pay no income taxes
When I first heard this statement a
couple of years ago, my initial feelings were of disbelief, quickly
followed by anger. That began my search to determine the target for
my anger!
Since then I have been repeatedly
reminded of this statistic by the media, and far too many emails to
even count. Clearly this must seem wrong and unfair to the rest of us
who do pay our income taxes. However, the more I studied our economy
and logically connected the facts, it became clear who the real
culprits were.
Our federal personal income tax system
came into existence in 1913. Since then our legislators have tweaked
and changed the rules, called tax codes, many times. Both parties
have continuously agreed we should have a progressive tax system.
This simply means the more income one earns, the higher percentage of
it should be paid in taxes. This undoubtedly resulted from our
pragmatic leaders being guided by two simple fundamentals: 1. If you
want real dough...collect it from those who have the most. And, 2.
You can't get blood out of a turnip! So let's not forget almost none
of these poorer Americans simply decided not to pay taxes...our
lawmakers clearly made that decision for them with the structure of
our tax codes.
Who are the non-tax-payers, and why
don't they pay taxes? Let's begin by remembering we have close to 25
million American workers and their families either completely without
work or terribly underemployed today. Also remember fully one half of
the non-income tax payers have household incomes which fall below the
official poverty line. Finally, wages have fallen in both real terms
and purchasing power over the past several decades.
Do you think the vast majority of these
poorer among us deliberately decided to become poor? Don't you think
most would prefer to earn wages sufficient to allow them to pay
income taxes? Do you think they take great pride in having to rely on
public assistance to help keep their families fed, sheltered, and
protected? Have you thought about all of the other government taxes
they do pay which are actually regressive in nature, in other words,
the less one earns the greater proportion goes to pay these other
taxes. I'm referring to state income tax, federal payroll tax, sales
tax, real estate tax, personal property tax, gasoline tax, excise
tax, etc. Can you imagine how much money these folks would have left
to provide for their families if income taxes were added to their
burden?
I've heard some say these poorer folks
just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps? What if there
are no bootstraps in our severely broken economy? Many of these
poorer are among our least educated and are caught up in what's
called generational poverty. With our current continuing recession,
most cannot find a way to escape its pull any more than any of us can
escape gravity. Should the more fortunate among us just say, too bad,
we made it on our own and you can too?
We should all feel real anger and even
shame, because America, in spite of our current economic woes,
remains the wealthiest economy in the world by a huge margin. Yet
almost half of our workers cannot make enough money to be able to
afford to pay federal income taxes.
We must blame the collective leadership
of both parties in Washington, DC. Over many decades our elected and
appointed leaders have increasingly paid more and more attention to
the short-term greed of those who can afford to buy their actions
with money and votes. Our legislators have then spent incredible sums
of our money in return. This was and is money we could not afford,
and our leaders failed to foresee, or simply ignored, the long term
consequences of these reckless actions. We, of course, are fully
culpable because we just keep voting for the same party and
incumbents, election after election...in spite of clear evidence of
their collective malfeasance.
So, while it's wrong that so many can't
pay income taxes, I hope you will no longer blame the poor, the
wealthy, or a single political party. Since our leaders from both
sides seem so unwilling to work together to find solutions, it
doesn't look as if our economy, wages, and lack of jobs is going to
improve much any time soon. When thinking about the plight of the
less fortunate among us, the rest of us need to remember that old
saying: "There, but for the grace of God, go I". Because
the truth is, if not today, it just might be you or your loved ones
in this situation in the near future.
These are my opinions. What do you
think?
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