This was a comment in this fine diary. As I thought about it, and agreed with the diarist's point that we are now engaged in perpetual war, I remembered a lecture. . . .
When I was an undergraduate studying Public Administration, we had a guest lecturer, an old lobbyist named Tom Dudgeon, who usually lobbied for Republicans. He had a reputation as an honest broker and often took up lobbying efforts for lost causes, and was often called the lobbyist for lost causes. He was a wise man, now gone, but he said something in that lecture 35 years ago that stuck with me.
He said that the only time you can improve the equity in a tax system is when the taxes for everyone is going up. Let me repeat that. The only time when equity can be restored to a tax system is when the taxes on everyone is going up.
He went on to explain that when everyone's taxes are increasing, every interest, up and down the line will stand up and defend themselves against their taking more than their fair share of the taxes. Everyone defends themselves in a generalized tax increase, and everyone can't defend themselves when taxes are going down because they get disarmed by the gentle calming terms that their taxes are going down.
In America, in fifty state capitols, in Congress, the interests of 280 million Americans have been neglected as tax cut after tax cut carved a bigger and bigger chunk out of the tax obligations of those people and moneyed interests at the top of the scale, and as the true burden of being an American as shifted lower and lower on the societal totem pole, all the while, smoothing the bitter vinegar of a shifting tax burden from the true malefactors of great wealth to those less fortunate and to our succeeding generations, with the disguising honey of "you're getting a tax cut too.
The United States government, and the fifty states governments cannot pay their bills, not because spending is too high. To the contrary, spending has been cut in 50 capitols. The governments are in the hole because the wealthy interests have shifted their tax burden, their payment for all the benefits of being an American Citizen or an American corporation enjoying the protection of local fire and police services, the construction and maintenance of highways and rail links, the delivery of water and sewer services, and their willingness to shift their burden for these services to more and more people, while those enjoying the benefits become less and less in number, this signifies that the society and the tax system equity is totally out of whack. Totally.
I'm going to throw the Overton Window wide open and say right here that there is no equity in our tax system. There is very little else to cut from state and federal budgets that will result in an increase in societal equity. There are no Pareto efficient cuts that remain. Our state budgets are wildly out of balance. Our federal budget is wildly out of balance with deficits growing, while those who gain the greatest benefit of being an American pay the very least, the smallest share of their income, and yet they reap the greatest benefit.
The tax system and societal equity are so out of whack, so very out of whack, that the only equitable thing left is to raise everyone's taxes, starting with a 1 per cent increase for those at the bottom of the economic heap, and increasing incrementally to 2, 3, 5, 7, 10 and 15 per cent at the top for those who can afford to pay.
And if the truly wealthy want to put it to a vote, I am absolutely sure that 290 million of us have more votes and can generate a louder voice than the 10 million at the top who can most afford to pay for the government that protects them, to put the perpetual wars on PayGo, and watch how quickly they end.
Go ahead, Mr. Boehner, Mr. Cantor, Mr. McConnell, Mr. Paul, and Mr. Paul, squawk to high heaven. I can demonstrate that your 12 year free ride is why we have the economic problems we have. I posit that our wars would end, the deficits would disappear, prosperity and job growth would ensue as the US government gets out of the loan markets and banks have to lend to small business and homeowners to stay in business.
Our soldiers would quit being killed in pointless civil wars we have no business being involved with, and we can fix our nation.
There, I've said it. It is time to raise the taxes on all Americans in an equitable fashion. Our tax system has lost its equity and its legitimacy, and common taxpayers like ourselves have absolutely no incentive to pay our fair share because everyone knows that the wealthy don't pay their fair share. It is time to fix it.
Note: The last paragraph ends my previous comment. We simply have to remember that the equity and legitimacy of our tax system has been going away since 1980, and that the Laffer Curve, Trickle Down Economics, also known as Voo Doo Economics, Supply Side Economics, Tax Cuts for the Rich, Tax breaks for Corporation, the myth of double taxation of corporate profits and nearly every other crackpot and crazy theory that the Republicans have foisted on Americans for 31 years now, have reduced equity, increased income disparity between rich and not rich, have shifted more and more burden on us, and never created the jobs that were advertised as the primary selling point of this load of flim flam. At some point, those at the bottom will see paying their taxes as something they should quit doing because no equity or legitimacy exists in ours system.
Current purveyors of this sham with names like John Kasich, Scott Walker, and others are playing the same game with far more chutzpah, less fear of getting caught, and sheer brazenness that has not been seen in America since the Roaring Twenties. It's time we citizens took a hard look without the razzle dazzle that would make a fictional Chicago lawyer proud, and do what is necessary to restore equity and legitimacy to our tax structure and our political system.