When it comes to the American economy, there is one fundamental lie and one fundamental truth and it is up to you which you choose to believe. Tax Day is really a chance to ask: “Which side am I on?”
The lie is that if the maximum freedom and, thus, maximum benefits are given to the super-rich elites, ultimately everyone will win because the super-rich will create companies and create jobs and buy things and that will benefit the rest of us. It’s been called various things over various times — Reaganomics, trickle down economics, free market capitalism. But mostly it’s just been called bullshit.
The average five-year-old could tell you the truth — that if you want to create the most amount of opportunity and prosperity for the most amount of people, it makes much more sense to spread opportunity and prosperity from the get-go rather than give it all to the top and pray it will spread. Bullshit economists — who are mostly from elite backgrounds, educated in elite institutions, and invested in preserving the elite status quo — have been trying for decades to persuade us to believe their lie rather than the common sense truth. Their lie led our economy right into the toilet, but the bullshit economists and their Wall Street pals are still scrambling to convince us that they’re the solution, not the problem.
The anti-tax agenda perpetuates the lie. In a currently uneven economy where wealth and privilege easily reproduce themselves while it’s harder and harder to climb from the bottom or the middle up the economic ladder, taxes are the primary way we as a society redistribute money to all the hardworking Americans who deserve their fair share and a fair shake. Sure, those Harvard-educated bank CEOs work hard, but do they work 300 times harder than you? Their pay is based not on hard work but on bullshit economics that favor the already-rich. Taxes are our way of saying, “Hey, good for you for making a bazillion dollars, but since you’ll still be rich with a bajillion, we’re going to use some of your money to help other have a shot.”
Picture the classic image of rich titans of industry sitting around a wood-paneled private club, animal heads on the walls, butlers with white gloves — the exclusivity of the rich enjoying their riches together while plotting how to get richer. Government is the clubhouse for the rest of us. Public schools, roads, electricity, Medicaid and Medicare, veteran’s benefits — government helps the rest of us have the things we need in life, the otherwise only the super-rich could afford.
Think about it. If there was no public water system in your town, the rich could import gallons of water from wherever, pay staff to wash their clothes in the river and boil water to drink, and so on. What would you do?
The rich want you to think that government is a bad idea for YOU because it’s really a bad idea for THEM. They would be more than happy to keep their tax money, send their kids to $30,000-a-year private schools, pay thousands out of pocket to get a cavity filled, fly a private plane here and there because highways would be ruined. But since there aren’t enough super-rich folks to rule elections (though they keep trying with corporate donations to candidates) they need our help, too. They need the rest of us to swallow their lie so they can keep getting richer and, as taxes decline by our own doing, the rest of us fall further and further into despair.
This isn’t to say government is perfect. We need a much more accountable, transparent and participatory politics in America. But thinking that if government doesn’t work perfectly then it doesn’t work at all is part of the lie. At a time when free market capitalism in its current form has failed us wildly, we’re not questioning the fundamentals of that system remotely as much as we should. But one minor or major misstep on the part of government, and we’re ready to throw the baby out with the bath water. We’re that brainwashed to believe the lie.
Last year, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said the people of Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands, who pay the highest taxes in the world, are also the happiest people in the world. Taxes don’t just benefit poor people. Taxes are what create shared prosperity and keep the middle class prosperous.
This Tax Day, as you’re dropping your return in the mail (or pressing that e-send button), instead of reinforcing the pro-rich, anti-tax lie and sighing grumpily as you do your duty, look around at everything your taxes are paying for, everything that helps you in your daily life — from the subsidized post office to the government-created Internet, to the roads and the water and the parks and the schools and the fire fighters and the stop signs and everything in between. Paying your taxes is your way to get America back on the right track for all of us, to reject the lie that helps the rich get richer and instead create a shared economy that benefits everyone.
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13 Responses to The Super-Rich Want You To Hate Taxes So They Can Keep Your Money
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[...] PDRTJS_settings_1682351_post_3065 = { "id" : "1682351", "unique_id" : "wp-post-3065", "title" : "The+Super-Rich+Want+You+to+Hate+Taxes+So+They+Can+Keep+Your+Money", "item_id" : "_post_3065", "permalink" : "http%3A%2F%2Fbearmarketnews.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F04%2F14%2Fthe-super-rich-want-you-to-hate-taxes-so-they-can-keep-your-money%2F" } Published on Wednesday, April 14, 2010 by Movement Vision Lab [...]
Ms. Kohn,
I originally saw this piece on the Chicago Craigslist Politics tab.
I’m going to post this on the Philly Tab (crediting you of course)
- CN
I agree, if we lived in one of those small European countries. But we live in the country whose military spending exceeds all our enemies and allies combined, so it’s more problematic. Our taxes support military empire in ways the European countries don’t. The TEA party protests taxes (Taxed Enough Already), but they’re usually oblivious to the connection with military spending. We need less military spending and perhaps higher taxes too. But we could do a lot of human good by spending a huge chunk of the military budget in other ways.
lmao… where do I begin?
Can we change the title to “The super-rich want you to like paying taxes so they can get your money though government”…?
That’d be a start….
Heaven forbid i’d like to keep more of my money to spend it on things i want…
Your claim that “free market capitalism in its current form has failed us” is laughable.
If you really think we have “free-market capitalism” then you really don’t know what capitalism is… what we have now is crony capitalism, fascism, corporatism, keynesianism, whatever you want to label it as… it’s anything but true free-market capitalism. Your blaming problems on something we don’t have or practiced in a long time. Get it right.
taxes.. lmao… don’t forget your taxes are also helping buy bombs & weapons, to kill innocent people in Afghanistan and Iraq all the while maintaining our empire around the world. You should be proud. Be happy!
“Public schools, roads, electricity, Medicaid and Medicare, veteran’s benefits — government helps the rest of us have the things we need in life, the otherwise only the super-rich could afford.”
LOL. So, I guess you think all these programs are a great success…
Public schools are failing.
Roads / highways are filled with potholes.
Electricity? Are you kidding me? The power went out a few days ago. I’m not kidding.
Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, all going bankrupt. Good one!
My grandpa was a vet. He loathed VA hospitals for obvious reasons.
Not only that… but your argument totally ignores the economies of scale and how true free-market drive prices down, so the “rest of us” can have the things we need in life.
Your article and arguments are just weird….
Oh, and your Scandinavian socialism argument is a myth:
http://mises.org/Community/forums/t/5616.aspx
I don’t know how the wealthy have come to be the windmills for so many liberal Don Quixotes, but if you would check the demographics and the numbers, you are likely to find that taxing the very rich at a 100% tax rate would not solve our financial problems. It would be a very symbolic, quixotic victory perhaps, but the middle class taxpayer is the one who really supports this country. Plus, almost half the country, the lower wage earners, pay no tax and even pay negative tax by virtue of things like the Earned Income Tax Credit and other credits. So whining about how much or how little the very rich pay is merely a symbolic exercise. The big problem is matching spending with revenue, or spending revenue more wisely. I pay my share, you pay your share; let whoever worry about his own share.
“The Super-Rich Want You To Hate Taxes So They Can Keep Your Money”
LOL LOL LOL
The writers of this article are just goddamn communists trying to fool people !!!!!
The vice-versa is true: The economic elite = THE COMMUNIST CONSPIRACY,
they want us to LOVE taxes and redistribution of wealth.
Because they know, that communism will offer THEM their “exceptions to the law”,
their say in government policy and their privileges. Communism is a way to
consolidate the wealth of the economic elite including all the global resources and to centralize power in a government, where ordinary people will be degraded to subservient slaves without rights and without freedom.
They are the masters of deceit, trying to convince people how good it is to one-self, to work for others, to spread the wealth, paying taxes that appraoch outright confiscation.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The money belongs to him who worked for it, in full .. and nobody should share anything with nobody else. Coerced, forced redistribution is wrong. It is legalized thievery and nothing else.
If children have nothing to eat .. that is sad.
But this is the reason each children has PARENTS.
If parents do not feed their children properly, they should be persecuted for this crime.
WOULD YOU PEOPLE WAKE UP !????
This is the same bullshit that got our oh so wunderbar führer Barry Soetoro elected!
I like how none of the public schools never talk about how statism (socialism, fascism, communism, Marxism) led to 100 MILLION lives LOST to BIG GOVERNMENT.
Fuck the left. If you don’t like Americanism (when things made sense with less government and whatnot, not the drug/party/rap/fuckfest country) then just LEAVE ALREADY! I’m sure that there are millions of people trying to flee their own oppressive governments (in the countries that the lefties really LOVE for some reason) who would GLADLY trade citizenship with these hypocrites.
I GOT A CRAZY IDEA FOR U, DONT DO IT ” lmaooo !!!!!
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I am not super rich. Just a self-made individual success despite the public schools, and the mountain of government agencies going to bed with executives of cooperate welfare rather than keeping them in line!
Sally if you ever had to survive by running a small business from the ground up you would see how restrictive having the local, state, and federal government on your back while you are herding suppliers, employees, while trying making sure your product is delivered perfectly truly is!
The Constitution was specifically written to protect individuals who succeed on their own. If you want gender equality and equality for the rest of the groups you sponsor then re-enact the mandatory military draft and have those individuals shed an equal amount of blood on protecting this country’s sovereignty. Next get the feds to enact separate property law to get all the leaches out of our marriages so that women stand on equal ground as men! Since you want women to be able to play in men’s sports then let’s have men trying out for women’s professional sports also!
Sally, All that any productive individual wants is to have is a stable, level playing field to base his or her future on. You and your socialist friends are not helping!
You want to demand real change; then quit using the equity of the true middle class as a yo-yo experiment so that the glorified welfare government unions can continue to fund fat pensions and entitlements while invalidating the value of hard work, and supporting illegal immigration!
Sally, my mother god rest her soul was educated in the 1940s to be a master secretary who learned short hand, typing, and accounting. She left us after 70 years of an honorable life, never blaming anyone for her position in life. Her life was the core foundation of at least 5 successful small businesses in which her discipline and integrity was the key to their success!
What have you really accomplished in your time on this planet accept for being a member of the leaches and parasites that are constantly putting more pressure on women like my mother whom not only take account for themselves but can be trusted enough to account for businesses that would not exist if it wasn’t for their integrity and accountability as individuals!
You and your friends are part of the yin-yang of Democrats and Republicans which feed upon each other while consuming the individual right that our constitution was written to protect! Get a clue you educated idiot! We the people from the ancestors of the farms and trades that secured this country are fed up with all of you double talking Republicans and Democrats!
Quit trying to pick and choose the winners and get out of the way! Take a good read of “For The New Intellectual” by Ayn Rand and quit propping up banks to give to the poor. Laissez-faire needs to strip corporate welfare, and social welfare from using middle class private sector dollars to feed all you leaches, and parasites period!
oh no, the author got it totally wrong ! The ultra-rich actually want the middle classes to feel all nice-warm-toasty-patriotic-proud about paying taxes, so that They (the rich) can get away in their private jet to their tax havens.
as a middle class PAYE (pay as you earn, UK term) sod, I hate paying 40% taxes here in the UK, because the rich can play by an entirely different set of rules. The Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett himself said it not too long ago that he pays a lesser percentage in taxes than his cleaner. Let the rich also pay the 40%, then I am happy to pay my 40%.
There are a bazillion ways for the ultra wealthy to avoid paying taxes altogether by employing specialist “tax advisors”, thanks to the loopholes created by the government to help their rich friends. Government “for the people”, my foot ! How about making it simple ? Flat taxes I say : everybody (except the low paid, i.e less than say $10,000 per year income and small business ) pays a flat 25% on income, profits, dividend, capital gains, whatever. No escape route, no loopholes, Oh but then that would leave the “tax advisors” and govt beureucrats out of a job ! Well, boo effing hoo I say ! That would make it too simple and the rich would not want it.
Off with your “make them feel guilty” rant ! I will be happy to pay taxes when the starbucks, amazon, Jimmy Carr and Sir Philip Green of this world pay their fare share, instead of hiding in their tax havens 6 months of the year and using all kinds of fancy accounting tricks ! And dont get me started on Netherlands ! It is actually a tax haven for many companies, and even rock bands like Rolling Stones. In Netherlands, they have one rule for companies, one for salaried idiots, who are forced to pay ripoff taxes. Maybe thats why drugs are legal there, to ease the pain, once you get people stoned and drunk, they canot think for themselves. A small poor quality hotel there (comparable to a Motel 6 in the US) costs at least 100 euro a night. Thats the cost of living we are talking.
Oh, and if you are a middle class guy whose career takes him all over the world, you are screwed ! I cant even invest in mutual funds, America has punitive taxes on “foreign mutual funds” (look up PFIC rules) and Britain, not to be outdone does not like foreign mutual funds (look up “Distributor status”). But if I was wealthy, I could create a “trust” and “offshore bond” and escape these punitive taxes.
So, you got it wrong ! The rich like the current system so they can get specialist “tax advice” and the middle classes can keep paying their 35% to 40% taxes. I wish we had a taxed-enough-already party here in the UK !