Lapham points to a report by Citizens for Tax Justice that shows half of the Bush tax cuts went to the top 5% of income-earners, while the bottom 60% got less than 15% of the Bush tax cuts. That little gift to the rich translates into an estimated $2.5 trillion.
Looking to reverse course, Responsible Wealth members "recognize that their own prosperity and success would not be possible without the foundation of a strong public education system, an effective transportation network, a strong legal system and more," Lapham notes.
"Those are the kinds of foundational building blocks that we get through our tax system. Responsible Wealth members are more than happy to pay their share to support those public investments that they have benefited so greatly from."
Of course, whenever the case for raising taxes on the wealthy is made, the response -- even from the "liberal" media -- is predictably derisive.
After a telephone press conference last week, Dana Milbank, writing for The Washington Post, offered this straw-man sarcasm:
"Of course, if millionaires really want to pay higher taxes, there's nothing stopping them. The Treasury Department Web site even accepts contributions by credit card to pay the public debt. There's also nothing to stop the millionaires from paying the tax obligations of, say, Washington Post columnists. But then they wouldn't have the satisfaction of giving their tax-cut proceeds to the pro-tax movement."
Thankfully, The Economist rhetorically slapped Milbank upside his head for making such an embarrasing nonsensical argument.
"Taxes are not charity. It would be a bad idea for wealthy people (to) contribute large amounts of money voluntarily to reduce the national debt. The first, less important reason for this is that any individual's contributions would be meaninglessly small;" to say nothing about the "invitation to free-riding" it would create.
"Government spending is collective spending, and the taxes we pay for it are collective taxes. Like it or not, this is collective action, and the arguments we have about it have to be collective as well. It is perfectly legitimate to argue that we should be spending less on various things, or that the kind of taxes being proposed to pay for our spending are unfair or more economically damaging than some other kind of tax. But you have to make that argument at the level of what we should do as a country." ...
...
The poll results were released in conjunction with a Wealth for the Common Good study that details how tax breaks over the past 50 years have gone mostly to the affluent. The study also notes that by simply allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire it would generate about $450 billion in revenue.
Some will call this class warfare. And they're right, just like Warren Buffet said. "There's class warfare, all right," the celebrated billionaire noted, "but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." ...
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