6 Dumb Arguments Against Taxing the Rich, ExplainedDebunking the conservative case against making the rich pay their fair share
On Saturday, the Obama administration unveiled the "Buffett Rule [1]," a proposed tax on millionaires and billionaires named after celebrity investor Warren Buffett, who has long argued that the federal government should demand more of the wealthy. The millionaires tax is certain to become a major point of contention in the 2012 presidential campaign, and Republicans have wasted no time in heaping it with calumnies. Here are the six most popular conservative arguments against a progressive tax code, and why they're wrong:
It's class warfare! [2]
Yeah right. Three decades of laissez-faire economic polices have allowed the rich to double their share of the national income while paying tax rates a fifth lower than before. The result, notes Kevin Drum [3], was "wage stagnation for everyone else, a massive financial collapse that ravaged the middle class, an enormous deficits that they'll be asked to pay off eventually." If the millionaires tax is the only blowback, the wealthy should count their blessings.
It's a tax on small business [4]
"Don't forget that most small businesses file taxes as individuals," House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said on Fox News Sunday. "So when you are raising top tax rates, you are raising taxes on these job creators." Except when you aren't. ThinkProgress's Pat Garofalo points out [5] that fewer than 2 percent of the nation's small businesses fall into either of the top two tax brackets. Plus, many of the small business filers in the upper brackets are merely investors who have nothing to do with running the business. And if small businesses don't want to pay taxes as individuals, they can file always as corporations.
It reduces incentives to work and invest [6]
Experience shows otherwise. As Nancy Folbre points out [7] over at Economix, "average annual rates of growth in gross domestic product in the high tax era between 1950 and 1980 exceeded those of the last 30 years. Increases in the top tax rate under President Bill Clinton were followed by robust economic expansion."
The other reasons are at the link. Below are some links to the citations in the article.
[2] http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/obamas-millionaires-tax/
http://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/09/paul-ryan-insults-our-intelligence-yet-again
5] http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/09/19/322193/small-business-taxes-lies/
[7] http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/11/taxing-the-rich/
Let's all ask ourselves a basic question - how did the wealthy get their money. The micro details may differ but the macro reasons are the same as they have always been. A big complex infrastructure such as the one the USA has makes it possible for business to do business. That infrastructure - roads, air traffic control, higher education, etc has to be paid for. Conservatives do not want the people who have become the richest to pay for their share of that complex infrastructure. The other big part of the macro picture is labor. If you're not an executive you're labor. Business cannot make money without labor. part of labor's compensation in a big free market like ours is roads, schools, firefighters, nurses, libraries, national parks and teachers. Those people and institutions must be paid for. Conservatives want it all for free. last I heard getting a lot of stuff for free was the worse kind of welfare.
