There’s something strange about this article in the Washington Times, linked by FEE this morning. It has the promising title of “Tax Burden Shift Seen as Lopsided” and it does complain that the rich are paying too much: good point. But the substance of the quotes from DC conservatives is not that the rich are overpaying but rather that the poor are underpaying.
“One of the mistakes that we as Republicans have made over the last 20 years — and this goes back to Reagan — is we continue to take more and more Americans off the income tax rolls entirely,” Stephen Moore says. That’s a problem? Yes, he says, it is “dangerous” that “the bottom third pay almost no income tax....’
“If we wind up creating a society where the bottom 50 percent of the population pays no tax, and in effect government becomes free for them, we could very much gravitate toward becoming a European-style welfare state,” Dan Mitchell says. But the problem of welfarism isn’t non-payment of taxes; it is receiving tax money from others. Grover Norquist adds: “The reason why you want everyone paying 10 percent is so the politicians treat everyone equally and don’t divide the population into different groups.”
Everyone quoted here worries about progressivity and the dangers it creates. But what could possibly be solved by raising taxes on the poor? Why not lower the taxes on the rich and leave it at that? Instead of arguing about who among us ought to have has limbs sawed off, someone ought to be willing to suggest that we leave everyone’s limbs on. In any case, it seems that free marketeers ought to hold up the non-taxed as an ideal, not go complaining to the press that they are too low for a particular group.
