Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to Why yes, now that you mention it.

There was a time when it was enough...
Robert — (archived)

...back when the top tax rates were near 70%. To complain that the wealthy pay too much in taxes is to forget how much better they have it now than they used to.

Let's also not forget that Carl's characterization of the wealthy making out like bandits because they can buy "their legions of lawyers and loopholes and deductions" is still true. Before inflation ratcheted it down on the heads of the middle class, the Alternative Minimum Tax was instituted to address precisely that problem, after analysis by the IRS revealed that the wealthy supposedly in high tax brackets actually paid from zero to one or two percent in taxes.

There's a cycle to these things--the tax code is reformed, then the lawyers and CPAs set to work finding the loopholes, the financiers develop new tax shelters to circumvent the intent of the law, and lobbyists set to work corrupting legislators to carve more loopholes and special breaks into the tax code. Every couple of decades we discover that the wealthy have managed to weasel out of paying even a fair share of taxes, and we have to come down on them like a ton of bricks. Sure, for a while taxation of the wealthy becomes punitive, but given the corruption that always precedes genuine tax reform, punishment is not unjust. If the wealthy didn't work so hard to warp the tax code in their favor, the people wouldn't have to work so hard to warp it back the other way.

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