Class Warfare Begins: Conservatives Want To Tax The Poor

http://freakoutnation.com/2010/12/26/class-warfare-begins-conservatives-want-to-tax-the-poor/

Published by Anomaly100 at 1:55 pm under The Economy

Now that tax cuts for the wealthy are in place, the Conservatives who demanded them, hostage-style, now want to escalate them on the poor. This was already prophesied by those of us who denounced the wealthiest getting the bigger piece of the proverbial pie, which unnecessarily puts this country more in debt.


Via Harold Pollack. George Will and incoming House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp are eager to tackle the problem of poor people having too much money:

Many conservatives, including Camp, believe that although most Americans should be paying lower taxes, more Americans should be paying taxes. The fact that 46.7 million earners pay no income tax creates moral hazard — incentives for perverse behavior: Free-riding people have scant incentive to restrain the growth of government they are not paying for with income taxes.

“I believe,” Camp says, “you’ve got to have some responsibility for the government you have.” People have co-payments under Medicare, and everyone should similarly have some “skin in the game” under the income tax system.


Yglesias:

As usual, this is based on the clever magic trick of pretending that poor people don’t pay state and local taxes. But whatever the merits of the position, it’s tactical important to keep in mind that this is the position. Lurking behind conservative rhetoric about the evils of government spending, is the reality of conservative hostility to taxes. And lurking behind conservative rhetoric about the evils of taxes is the reality of conservative hostility to taxing rich people. Which means that Republicans are likely to insist that any revenue-enhancing deficit-control package rely heavily on regressive measures.


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