I get so frustrated when I hear even Claire McCaskill afraid to confront the phrase “redistribution of wealth” head on.
Look. The poor spend a much greater perecentage of their disposable income on taxes than the rich do. The poor rarely have disposable income, so any taxes they pay are a hardship. In the early years of taxation,in recognition of that, the poor weren’t taxed at all.
In Hoover’s time, in the run-up to the Great Depression, the rich were paying a paltry 25% tax rate at the upper income bracket. So their taxes, relative to their disposable income (income beyond the necessities of food, shelter, college for their kids, and healthcare), were thin indeed.
Taxes have historically taken from the poor and given to the rich, in the hopes that it would trickle back down. But how many people does a new yacht employ? Does that really stimulate the economy? Give that fifteen million dollars to a few people who want to start a few small businesses and you’d employ more people for longer in quality jobs.
When FDR took office, one of the things he had to do to get us out of the Great Depression was to raise the upper tax bracket. Before he died, the upper tax bracket rose, in steps, all the way to 95%! It was John F. Kennedy, btw, not a Republican, who ultimately said that’s too high, and got the bracket lowered. I don’t remember the figure and could look it up, but my point is this.
In terms of luxury income – income beyond the basic necessities, our tax code has, for years, taken from the poor and given to the rich. We been redistributing wealth upward for years. Isn’t it just and fair to redistribute wealth in the opposite direction purely to balance that equation? And in the future, shouldn’t we seek to take an equal proportion of people’s disposable income?
We’ve taxed people regressively (while calling it progressive, which it hasn’t been, really in terms of expendable income) for years, and used that money to invest in new technologies that we then hand over, royalty free, to big business. It’s more than fair that we tax people progressively, not regressively, and use that money to invest not only in research projects, but in infrastructure work projects.
It’s the right thing to do. It’s the fair thing to do. And maybe it’s time to invoke the image of Robin Hood, and remind people that taking from the rich and giving to the poor is sometimes the only remedy in an unjust, unfair society.