Letter Bag: Government's Job Isn't to Create "Fairness"

Recently, I received the following comment on the post "Understanding Infrastructure in Government Of, By and For the People."

He paid more money because he makes more money. I don't get your point. We all pay our share of taxes. Unfortunately, the wealthy pay less in proportion to their income than the middle class and that is not fair. - Anonymous (Henceforth referred to as Trogdor - you might want to google it before reading on so you get a lot of my included jokes.)

Dear Trogdor:

Your entire comment is illogical on two fronts. Let's start with the obvious one: Despite what you're being spoon fed on MSNBC or CNN or whatever Drive-By Media source you're regurgitating, it turns out the wealthy pay more in taxes both proportionally and in terms of dollars than those with less.

You see, Troggy, we have a progressive income tax system. Those in the top tax bracket pay 35% of their income in taxes, while those in the bottom bracket pay 10%.  There are also three additional brackets in the middle. Each one has an income level associated. The more money you make, the higher percentage of taxes you pay. Furthermore, the top 1% of wage earners pay 35% of all taxes, so they are paying a significantly larger percentage of the burden than their proportion of the population.

Then we come to your statement about what's "fair." By your logic, the government should take money it doesn't need just to make life "fair."

Now I'm not sure where your Mommy and Daddy were when they were supposed to be teaching you these things, Troggy, so I guess I'll step in.  (I assume they were out burnanating something.)  Please pay attention: LIFE ISN'T FAIR.  Moreover, it isn't the government's job to ensure some arbitrary definition of "fairness." It's job is to a) protect our God-given rights from all threats to our liberty, both domestic and foreign and b) For THE PEOPLE to co-op together to handle services we all need like roads and police departments (the latter falls under "a" as well).

Despite what President Obama wants you to believe, that wealthy person with a business pays significantly more in taxes toward that infrastructure. Furthermore, a business person does not use those roads and other infrastructure to even a relatively proportional degree more than the average consumer. Sorry to keep bursting your liberal bubble, Trogdor, but roads don't actually incur more wear and tear when a business vehicle uses it over a regular consumer vehicle. And while you can argue that a business vehicle is on the road more than the consumer vehicle, I'd like to once again repeat: THE BUSINESS OWNER PAYS MORE IN TAXES!

I know, I know, I'm asking you to think about taxes instead of buying a bumper sticker slogan that sounds smart, Trogdor, instead of just repeating an Obama catchphrase that validates confiscating money from those who have earned it and giving it to you in the form of free goodies. But you see, it's no more just to burninate the money of the wealthy as it is to burninate the money of the peasants.

Dissecting the Liberal Talking Points: The Wealthy Pay for the Infrastructure Already!

It's been a favorite liberal point for a while now: "It's justified to raise taxes on the wealthy because they benefit most from government paid for infrastructure, etc. with their businesses." President Obama made a similar claim recently when he said that businesses who succeeded didn't really deserve the credit, because they used public roads, bridges, etc.

I touched on the gaping hole in this logic yesterday, but let's dive into it more. Here's the problem:

THE WEALTHY PAY MORE IN TAXES IN ALL FORMS!

Let's look at some of the primary types of taxes, shall we? First of all, there are income taxes. People who make more income, whether under a flat tax system or a graduated income tax system pay more money in taxes. Under a flat tax (for the sake of argument let's say 15%) a person who makes $20,000 in income pays $3000 in taxes before deductions and credits. A person who earns $200,000 per year in income pays $30,000 in taxes before deductions and credits. (For those of you from Palm Beach County, FL, $30,000 is more than $3,000.)

Then we could consider our national graduated income taxes. The person making $20,000 per year is in the 10% tax bracket. That means they are paying, before deductions and credits, $2000 in taxes. The Person making $20,000 per year is in the 35% federal tax bracket. They are paying $75,000 in taxes before before deductions and credits. (For those of you from Palm Beach County, FL, $75,000 is more than $20,000.)

So, even if we except your erroneous logic, that evil, wealthy business owner is already paying a significantly larger amount of money into the community infrastructure pot.

Then there are the other two main sorts of taxes that come into play when it comes to infrastructure: Sales Tax and Property Tax. Now if a person making $200,000 spends say 80% of their income and saves 20%, that means $160,000 is spent. The lion's share of purchases with that money will be subject to sales tax. Let's even pretend another 20% of that money is spent on products like food and clothing that are sales tax exempt. We're now at $120,000 of income being taxes on sales. So let's take the sales tax I pay here in New York State of 8%. That means this person is pay $9,600 per year in sales tax. (That's in addition to what they pay in state and federal income taxes).

Now let's pretend our $20,000 per year person similarly saves 20% of their income and spends an additional 20% on tax-exempt products like food and clothing. So that means $12,000 of their spending annually is subject to sales tax. Again, at the 8% rate I pay in New York, that person is paying $960 per year in sales tax.

(For those of you from Palm Beach County, FL, $9,600 a year is more than $960 a year.)

So again, this person is paying significantly more than his counterpart (ten times as much, to be specific) of his working class counterpart. Now property taxes. I hope I don't need to give an object lesson to explain that the property taxes are significantly higher on a ten bedroom mansion sitting on seven acres of lake-front property has higher property taxes than a 3 bedroom ranch on half an acre of land in a suburban neighborhood.

Here's the bottom line: These evil, horrible wealthy people who President Obama wants to see punished for their success are already paying their "fair share." Even if they are consuming more public works and services, they are also paying significantly more in taxes than their working class counterpart. No matter how you slice it, the stock liberal logic does not hold water. Ultimately, it comes back to this: the Left wants to confiscate more of other people's money so they can keep spending and spending, and they're trying to give you a road to rationalize it. End of story.

Dissecting the Liberal Talking Points: Roads, Schools Don't Rationalize Liberal Spending

It's the latest talking point from both Activist and Neighborhood Liberals: Every time a conservative points out something like "Apple created the iPod 3 without government help" they respond, "Oh yeah?  It's shipped on public roads...and most of their employees went to public schools! Couldn't do it without government!" 

The reality is that the American public is waking up and realizing (finally!) that government is not the solution to our problem and that, in fact, it is the source of many of our problems. So now liberals are once again trying to change the conversation by bringing up schools and roads and other such things that government is the...shall we say, least worst...entity to handle.  It's also a rationalization for saying that "the rich don't pay their fair share in taxes!" (Which they have to rationalize since fact is the "evil" top 1% pay 36% of the tax burden and the top 10% pay more than 70% of the tax burden.)  They try to rationalize it by saying that those businesses use public infrastructure to ship their products ergo they somehow benefit more than other citizens from the public roads (of course, those same people use the same roads to get to their jobs etc).

It's time for a reality check on this talking point, which I'm pleased to be able to provide.  First and foremost, this entire argument is a Straw Man argument. Conservatives don't argue with government handling infrastructure (for those of you from Palm Beach County, FL, that'd be roads and bridges).  We do think the best place to handle this kind of project is local governments or, at most, state governments and not the Federal government.  The most efficient (relatively speaking...government efficiency is an oxymoron as always) way to handle these jobs is the public sector. Conservatives also don't argue with public schools.  Yet we again believe the best way to handle schools is the local level or at the most the state level, and never at the national level.

Now to the issue at hand:  Does this translate into "couldn't live without government?"  Absolutely not!  Fact is, public schools weren't available to all individuals in America until 1870!  It wasn't until 1910 when public school attendance was mandatory.  Are you saying that there weren't businesses before 1910?  Of course there were!  As far as public highways? The first public highway wasn't commissioned until 1921!  And again, every citizen has the right to use the public roads and has equal access.  The disparity between the taxes paid by the business owner over the rest of the population more than covers the theoretical extra wear and tear on the road from business shipping.

More importantly, this excuse of "infrastructure and education" absolutely does not validate the level of government spending that the modern liberal desires.  Government has handled both for decades.  Let's take a couple of snapshot years, shall we? 

In 1952, the federal deficit was $3.883 Billion.  Adjusted for inflation that's $31.536 Billion in modern dollars (translation - less than one day of modern deficit spending).  In 1954 the deficit was $3.114 Billion. Adjusted for inflation that's $24.695 Billion in modern dollars (translation - again, less than one day of modern deficit spending).  Finally, in 1962, the federal budget deficit was $9.229 Billion.  Adjusted for inflation that's a mere $65.780 Billion in modern dollars (translation - about two days worth of modern deficit spending).

What's the point, you ask?  Here's the point: In every one of those years, government was spending on infrastructure and schools. Yet the deficits were very reasonable...and I didn't even mention fiscal years 1951, 1956 or 1957, where the federal government ran a modest surplus...and yes, the government was spending for infrastructure and schools in those years as well.  Clearly, the cause of our trillion dollar deficits each year aren't because of Obamanomics and government spending. 

Talking about infrastructure and education, or if you prefer fire departments, police departments, or any other legitimate public service is simply a cop-out by the Left to deflect the realities: Government isn't overspending on the things it ought to be doing, nor is the problem that we don't tax enough.  The problem is...the problem has always been...that we spend too much and we spend to much not on necessities but on frivolous and unnecessary things.  Sometimes, those unnecessary things are veiled as compassion. 

Feeding people who legitimately can't feed themselves? Fine.  But doing so in a way that other people's money can be spent on candy, on potato chips, on soda? (I've managed an inner-city store...it was infuriating to see what food stamps were spent on...in greater quantities than actual nutritious food.) Advertising food stamps?  Again, those who need it don't need advertisements (which I can tell you due the fact that I work in media advertising is not cheap) to tell people "you may not think you qualify for food stamps, but you might!" Think about that!  "You may have enough money to buy food...but we can give you food stamps anyway!"

The truth that no liberal wants to tell you is that infrastructure, schools, etc. are a drop in the bucket of the deficit.  More importantly, they won't tell you that conservatives don't argue against infrastructure or school spending.  We do argue against Cowboy Poetry festivals, investing in phantom "Green Energy" and paying for people to not work for 3 years and giving food stamps to people who legitimately do not need it.  We argue against waste.  So let's refuse to engage in this misdirection and change the conversation.