A recent NYT article cited the often repeated statistic that the top 10% of earners in our country pay 71% of the taxes. This stat is often used as a way of demonstrating that the top wage earners pay their fair share and that the remaining 90% of us should do more. Of course this is an interesting point and it certainly hasnt always been this way. There was a time when the middle class paid a much greater portion of the national bill, back when we had a middle class. And, there is the rub. How did this inequality come to pass? What happened to make it so that only a few could afford to pay for that tremendous military, the medical care system that consumes about 16% of our GDP, the transportation systems that connect our nation and make it profitable, the discovery of new oil for a hungry population, etc.? Where did that semi-affluent group of middle-classers go?
Since the Reagan "era" we have bemoaned the loss of the middle class. Since the Reagan era liberals have cautioned against the globalization of profit. And since that time we, together with out conservative brothers and sisters have allowed the uber-wealthy to seek more and more destructive ways of making that profit. We have done this through the dismantling of safeguards put in place during the great depression. We have done this through the blending of terms such as free market and capitalism, individualism and greed, responsibility and enlightened self interest. And, we have done it through hiding the real cost of everything.
For instance when we complain about the cost of gasoline at the pumps, we rarely stop to think about the additional costs of the military stabilization plan we have enacted in the middle east. The cost of a hamburger usually doesnt include the costs of subsidies to farmers, the reduced costs of transportation through tax subsidies, etc. There is no getting around it, everything costs, those costs are subsidized, and they amount to one thing. Greater profits for the top 10%. By building a consumer "class" the corporate magnets have generated tremendous profits while extracting greater and greater amounts of wealth from the middle class that support them. One might argue that this is the fault of the purchaser, for buying food, for using the medical system, etc. I suppose you are right, we could all grow our own food and die when we get worms. (Yes even the FDA has its role to play in ginning up profits). Pay as you go, thats the only fair way right... But what of those that hold no land to do so? For whom all the land had already been purchased and all of the market choices had already been made?
No, I am not advocating a more socialistic approach, only that we all realize that replacing the government's role with that of the corporation has now also become only semantics. The system itself is a tax, paid to the wealthiest of our nation. Whether it is 71% or 90% is it so wrong to ask for some of that tax to be used to support schools, roads, the military, the poor? So to the 10% that are whining about how much they pay, you created the poor, you use them to garner your profits, now you pay for them. If you want to be our government without representation, then act like one. Without us, all that lovely money goes away.