Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Ari Fleischer Tells the Readers of the Wall Street Journal That They Are Stupid

Ari tries to make this case:
Yet President Obama says that "for some time now, when compared to the middle class," the wealthy "haven't been asked to do their fair share." He's right that the system isn't fair, but not because the top 1% pay too little. It is because they pay too much.
He tries with a few canards that have been debunked repeatedly – such as looking at the share of Federal taxes paid by each quintile of the population. To be fair, he also shows each quintiles share of national income on the way to comparing each quintiles effective tax rate – as long as we consider only Federal taxes. After all – no one really pays state and local taxes. Yes – I know Greg Mankiw loves to do the same thing. But any serious discussion of the tax burden cannot omit state and local taxes. And let’s read on:
We learned during the 2008 campaign that he believes in spreading the wealth around. And recently we learned he doesn't believe that successful people made it on their own. Without the government, the president tells us, job creators and entrepreneurs would not be able to make it in America. It's really the other way around. Without job creators and the successful, the government wouldn't have any money. So next time Mr. Obama meets someone in the top 1% or even the top 20%, instead of saying they're not paying their fair share, he should simply say thank you.
The only thing Ari left off was Art Laffer’s cocktail napkin!

2 comments:

run75441 said...

PGL:

Your words fall on deafg ears. In bible-thumping Ohio, they believe the 1% earned the right to be rich with no one's help. I have listened to the noise and blathering. There is no reasoning with them or the pointing out of facts. The 1 percent pay 70% of all federal income tax.

Mike Sax said...

Not only does this whining about how much the rich supposedly pay ignore state and local taxes it also ignores payroll taxes where most Americans have the highest tax burden.

To say that the wealth don't pay enogh taxes is the same thing as saying the nonwealthy don't oay enough. It means the same thing.