Ok, I lifted this from my dad's blog, but I'm assuming he won't mind. Especially since he's sending it to the local paper (Mobile Press-Register). Think of this as your very own advance viewing:
Recently there have been a couple of letters to the editor addressing tax cuts and attempting to show they don’t work or help us. These letters are from Al Hoffman on 3-30-08 (Tax cuts haven’t helped), and Scott Lacey (Don’t support tax cuts) on 3-31-08. Fearing the invasive nature of ignorance on the populace in matters such as these, I wish to counter their arguments with fact and common sense.
I will allow that the government is a necessary evil and doesn’t exist for free. But to imply that tax cuts are wrong because we’ll short the government some how, is preposterous.
Mr. Hoffman scoffs that Republicans love to state that you do better with your money than when they take it from your paycheck, send it to ..:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Washington, and decide how to spend it for you. Aside from an allegory that the venerable Mr. Paul Harvey used on his newscast once (that taxes are like giving yourself a blood transfusion from your right arm to your left; but when government helps you, they spill half of it on the floor), the premise that Washington can better decide how to spend your money is laughable.
He goes on to mention that this "tax-cut business" started in the 80’s, and our national debt was easily manageable (his words, folks, I can’t make this kind of stuff up) though it now reaches close to 10 trillion, most if not all created by Republican administrations. Well, not a hard point when one considers that Republicans have been in the White House more than Democrats since the 80’s, but let’s get real here. The Administration does not make the debt. Not one dime of it. ALL spending starts and stops in a little place called Congress. C’mon people, read the Constitution. It’s so easily available it’s shameful how little people know about it.
But; what did the "tax-cut business" actually do? Let’s see. Under President Reagan, gross receipts to the treasury rose close to double what they were before the cuts. Gasp. How can this be, they ask. Simple; it spurred the economy with more money being invested in business which created more jobs which created more paychecks for the government to finger through the dollars of and claim, through fiat, to be rightfully theirs. Here’s a small secret. As great as that was, it wasn’t the "Republican administration" that passed it. It recommended it, and Congress passed it. And the Bush administration’s recommended cuts were, you guessed it, passed by Congress as well (isn’t that Congress a busy little bunch!). The revenues then increased by 50% by the way, which when you consider being in a recession AND recovering from the multibillion dollar economic impact of 9/11 it is pretty impressive.
So we see the problem isn’t receipts. It is, as the old saw goes, a problem with the outgo exceeding the income. Start asking your representatives what the heck they’re doing spending our money like drunks!! And now, on to Mr. Lacey. This one’s logic is, as Alice in Wonderland said, "curiouser and curiouser." Part of what gets my goat on this is the obvious play towards class envy.
According to Mr. Lacey, wealthy taxpayers "under the Bush tax cuts" received an average of $1021/wk in cuts on taxes (that’s a bad thing?). While Mr. Low-Income who earns less than $15,000 a year got $1.75/wk. He didn’t give the yearly income of Mr. Evil the rich man, but let’s say he is in the top…1%. You know, the yacht and caviar type… the filthy pig. Let’s forget that even though he earns only 21 percent of the nation’s wealth, he pays just over 39% of the total tax burden for the country. I guess he’s getting off pretty light, huh? "Yeah, but Mr. 15k a year still only gets a buck-75 back on the tax cut. That’s not fair. Oh, I don’t know about that, considering that at that strata he has no tax burden. That was taken care of by the top 60% (approximately) of wage earners. In fact (oh those meddlesome facts), the bottom 50% paid only 3.07% of the tax burden. the top 50%, those earning over $30,881/yr paid 96.93%.
What is my point? If I earn 100 dollars a week and keep 75%, I have $75. If you make $10/wk, your portion is 7.50. If you give me another 5% in my tax cut, I get $5 more. You get 50 cents. "Not enough", to quote Mr. Lacey, "to buy a half gallon of milk, a loaf of bread, a pack of cigarettes…" etc. Well, duh! If I have more, my percentages are obviously going to add up to more. You’ve not made any point except to give a wet pants whine of "It’s not fair, he has more than me!" He might also have made the investment in higher education and good money management practices (he’s also less likely to be a smoker, believe it or not. An expensive habit these days made more expensive by the same Washington that knows how to handle money so much better than you).
Then, Mr. Lacey gives me more of a smile mentioning the middle 20% of taxpayers in the 27k-44k bracket. They also happen to fall into another bracket by the way; that of the bottom 75% of taxpayers who only pay 10.94% of the nations taxes, the other 85.99% being paid by the top 25% of earners. They only get $11.54 a week which would, and I quote again because I can’t make stuff this good up on my own, "only buy a half tank of gas…or a couple of six packs of beer." If he’s needing a couple of 6-packs a week, he may have other problems like getting a life, investing in worthwhile endeavors that will have a dividend later in life, or other such goofy things that the rich seem to always gravitate towards.
Mr. Lacey, I’ll throw you a bone. You are so close to the truth in the last paragraph I’m going to give you a pass on it. You are right. Payroll taxes are strangling the US workforce. Study the Fair Tax (fairtax.org) and you’ll see that you can get rid of all of them and America can be prosperous at the same time, while totally liberating the poor from ANY tax burden.
Yet to promote greater taxation by repealing the Bush Tax Cuts as a solution really negates any good point you made in the last paragraph; not to mention boggling the mind. When the taxes go up, the evil filthy nasty rich guys actually try to cover their six o’clocks and hold on to some of their hard earned money, which means less investing, which leads to less jobs. THEN what will Smokin’ Joe Six Pack have to buy his necessities?!
To sum it all up, it’s our money, and the government confiscates more than it needs. Make them use less. Make them use the same budget practices we must. Can we borrow ourselves into prosperity? Nor can the government. Can we run deficits year to year? Who has a bank that will allow them that luxury? The government doesn’t need that luxury either.
Also, don’t hate the rich. For one thing, a poor man will never hire you. For another, this awesome country that many are squandering still allows you and anyone else who aspires through hard work and determination, the opportunity to succeed and become wealthy as well. Who knows, that could lead to more of another pass-time of the rich; philanthropy. "Ain’t that a heck of a note!"
