A response to the wealthy whiners

[markpkessinger]

(Originally posted in the comments attached to Katrina vanden Heuvel's Among the wealthy, a new voice for fiscal sacrifice at the Washington Post's site.)

I am astounded by the amount of infantile whining about tax rates on the wealthiest segment of taxpayers. Look, your accumulation of wealth has only been possible because you live in a first world, highly developed country with a decent (but rapidly decaying due to the irresponsible neglect of recent years) transportation, communication and technological infrastructures. All of that costs, and all of it requires that we maintain a decently educated and competitive workforce. But what the wealthy whiners -- who, after all, already "have theirs," want to do is essentially skip out on the check that is now due. A progressive tax structure is just in so far as the wealthy derive greater economic benefit from these various types of public infrastructure. Your tax rates are at historic lows, and all that is being proposed here is to allow a 36% rate revert to the pre-Bush rate of 39%.

And before you even say it, don't start with your usual, ahistorical appeals to the Tea Parties of the 18th C. The founders were not opposed to taxation -- they were educated and sophisticated enough to understand the necessity of taxation. They were opposed to having taxes levied by a government in which they did not have elected representation on behalf of their interests as the decisions regarding those tax levies were debated and enacted -- i.e., "taxation without representation."

Some here have pointed out that a couple raising a family on $250K a year aren't exactly millionaires, and must still "worry about every penny." With all due respect, there are a hell of a lot of folks in this country who must raise families on a whole lot less than $250K. Now, if you have taken on a mortgage and other debt that have left your $250K stretched to the limit, perhaps the problem (as you are so fond of telling people whose houses are being foreclosed upon) is that you voluntarily assumed too great a level of indebtedness. Mmmm?

[Hannah Bell]

1. kr

[Name removed]

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