Americans need to learn what Europeans know about taxes - they only matter to the rich.
The Great Tax Con Job
Republicans are using the T-word - taxes - to attack the Obama healthcare program. It's a strategy based in a lie.
A very small niche of America's uber-wealthy have pulled off what may well be the biggest con job in the history of our republic, and they did it in a startlingly brief 30 or so years. True, they spent over three billion dollars to make it happen, but the reward to them was in the hundreds of billions - and will continue to be.
All of this money was spent - invested, really, since it's been more than saved back in low income tax rates on millionaires and billionaires - to convince Americans that up is down and black is white when it comes to income taxes. Here's how it works:
Working Person's Tax Effect - version one
Most working people spend pretty much all of what they earn - their "disposable/discretionary" income is close to zero. Savings rates in the US among working people typically are small - one to five percent - and during the last few years of the W. Bush administration actually went negative. So the take-home pay that people have after taxes - regardless of what the taxes may be - is pretty much what they live on.
Then came Reaganomics.
Reagan cut top marginal rates on millionaires and billionaires from 74% down to 38% and there was an immediate surge in the markets - followed by the worst crash since the Great Depression and the failure of virtually the entire nation's savings and loan banking system.
Bush I cut taxes, and the nation fell into a severe recession while debt soared and wages for working people fell.
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