A friend of mine and I are having a discussion on taxes. He recently announced to me that he had only paid less than 20 (yes twenty) dollars of federal income tax out of about 85,000 dollar income. This person is a Republican and seemed pleased to be paying so little taxes.
Below is my response to my friend.
This is a part of the note from my friend.
My AGI was about $84,000. I don't know if that made me technically middle-class, but I had certainly moved in that direction. Guess how much I paid in federal income tax? $16.75! If I paid that little, then people below me in the equivalent situation paid even less.
Well, I had to think about your note for a couple of days.
Something about this part really was bugging me, and I
figured out what it is.
Let's take the second part first: your assumption that
everyone below you on the income bracket paid less
taxes than you. This just is not true. I mean it sounds
logical on first look, but its just not reality. Our friends with 2 kids who's combined income is less than yours (both parents are teachers) pay several thousand dollars in
federal taxes. You must be getting all kinds of special
breaks perhaps becuase you have many children and
are paying tuitions etc.
But it is really the first part of your statement, about paying only 16.75 in taxes that I have a hard time with, and perhaps it symbolizes for me the way progressives view Republicans. Our stereotype of GOP folks is that they want all the benefits of our society, but don't want to chip in to pay for it. Or another way of looking at it, they view taxes as something to be avoided, something unfair, something they can try to do their best to not pay, and if they get their tax bill down low, they have "won" the game.
Progressives see that our civil society, its structures and institutions,the roads, courts, police, fire, schools, military, and social safety nets, all allow us to live in a terrific country. It is a country who's ideals include fairness and compassion, care for the environment, justice and personal freedoms and rights. It is this societal structure that enables all of us to earn income, collect wealth (if that is our goal), send our children out into a relatively safe culture to enjoy their lives too. So we know everyone needs to chip in to pay for this. The alternative is probably some sort of anarchy, every person for himself, no criminal justice system, no federal highway system, no FBI to track the bad guys, no military to defend us, no fire/police, no federal funding for schools so kids are uneducated if they are too poor to pay for school (that's the case in many 3rd world countries),no EPA to protect the environment from industrial pollution (imagine
how bad pollution would be if there were no laws or laws with no enforcement money behind them). I could go on and on but I'm sure you know what I'm saying.
So when I hear you payed less than 20 dollars tax, it does not make me celebrate for you. It just makes me a bit sad that you seem to think its OK, even good. This means the rest of us, or if I want to take it personally, I, am paying your share of what it takes to keep our society going.
Now I absolutely think there are large parts of the federal budget
that are wasted and mis-spent. I for one am not pleased that some of my tax dollars are going to pay for 500 lb bombs to be dropped on civilians in Iraq, or to pay the salaries of CIA interrogators to water board prisoners, or to pay for pork projects everywhere. I'm not happy that many people cheated the system and got 2000 dollar payouts
after Katrina that they did not qualify for. But just
because I don't like those things, does not mean I get to not pay my share overall for keeping this country running. What it means is that it is my job to vote for representatives that will do a better job with our federal budget, and spend money on things that are in line with my values. I also know that my values will differ from others' values, so the whole system will end up as a comprimise, some stuff each person will agree and disagree on, but the in the whole we have a country we all love to live in.
Now about the rich who pay a lot of the total taxes for the country, and therefore in your judgement deserve a break on their tax bill. I see it this way. It is this very society that has enabled them to get rich. The rich are rich because the poor are poor. Let me explain. All wealth at its source is derived from natural resources and the
processing of those resources. So first you need to obtain those resources: timber, cotton, oil, metals etc. Many of these enjoy federal subsidies and tax breaks. OK, so once the company buys this stuff, workers have to truck it around and make it into products which then go to market to be bought by other workers. Those workers are the folks making 5, 10, 20, or 50 dollars and hour. How much are the rich making? Some of them make hundreds of dollars a minute to
oversea a big company. Do you get what I'm saying here? The rich would not be rich if there was not a society under them to enable them to accumulate wealth. For this reason I see it as totally fair for the rich to pay a large portion of their wealth to support the system they are benefiting from. The poor are already, in some respects, supporting
the rich.
Now I do hear people saying stuff like "I worked really hard to build this company, many long hours, lots of financial risk etc." True, and its fine with me if those sorts of people have a relatively high income. But has that person really worked "harder" than the average person who builds
roads, hauls away trash, teaches kids, slaughters cattle and cuts up meat , works in a factory? I mean which type of job would you rather have, and comfy air conditioned office, or out plowing the fields and harvesting the crops? To me it is not at all true that harder working people in general are richer. In fact, if you can only get a job that pays 5 or 8 dollars an hour, you need a job and a half or two jobs to support your kids. Often times the real difference is not who is willing to work harder, but who had the advantages
of birth. Were you born into a family that sent you to college and law school, or one who lived in a lousy school district where half the kids drop out of high school. I understand that even an underprivileged kid can work his/her
way up, and some do, but turn it around. How many upper and upper middle class kids, if dropped into the poor kid's circumstances, would end up in college and with a high earning power? Not many if my students
are representative of rich kids. (I'm a teacher in a private school)
So that is my diatribe on taxes and society, and perhaps it is at the heartof why we see government and society so differently.