[lbo-talk] A Case for Working-Class Tax Cuts

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Fri Feb 17 19:31:11 PST 2006


Michael wrote:


> > Read the paper <http://www.princeton.edu/~bartels/homer.pdf>
> ["Homer Gets
> > A Tax Cut"] Bartels ... marshals evidence showing that it's not
> just a
> > matter of being poorly informed
>
> I'm not sure that's entirely true. When Bartels separates people
> into informed and uninformed (in order to run correlations), he
> does it entirely on the basis of a single self-evaluation question
> about general knowledge about political affairs (footnote 37, page
> 29). But earlier he cites a Kaiser poll about people's knowledge
> about tax matters (on page 20) that shows that vast majority of
> people are completely ignorant of literally the first thing about
> tax matters, namely whether they paid more income tax or payroll
> taxes -- 85% either didn't know or were wrong.

The payroll tax rate has _more than doubled_: "the payroll tax rate has been raised from 6.25% to 15.3%" since 1962 (at <http:// www.faireconomy.org/Taxes/HTMLReports/Shifty_Tax_Cuts.html>). While the government still isn't "of the people, by the people, for the people," it sure is coming close to getting largely _paid for_ by the people: "Since 1963, the share of total federal receipts collected from the regressive payroll tax has risen from 17% to 40%, an increase of 135%" (at <http://www.faireconomy.org/Taxes/HTMLReports/ Shifty_Tax_Cuts.html>). (Add the rises in sales taxes, user fees, and other taxes paid by workers to this fact.) In other words, the tax burden on workers has gotten heavier, and that is why they respond positively to the idea of "tax cuts." That's the essence of the Republican (and to a lesser extent Democrat) bait and switch: politicians cut taxes on the rich while raising taxes on workers -> workers groan under a heavier tax burden -> workers desire tax cuts on them -> politicians promise tax cuts -> workers respond positively -> politicians again cut taxes on the rich while raising taxes on workers. Politicians can repeat the same cycle nearly endlessly.

To break this cycle, we need to make a case for working-class tax cuts: cut taxes on workers and pay for the working-class tax cuts by higher taxes on the rich and corporations.

Yoshie Furuhashi <http://montages.blogspot.com> <http://monthlyreview.org> <http://mrzine.org>



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