Over two years ago I posted Tax the Poor featuring Ari Fleischer’s article in the Wall Street Journal Everyone Should Pay Income Taxes. This same idea is addressed in the blog Powerline (now added to my recommended list) in Is There a Conservative Case for Higher Taxes? by Steven Hayward, July 5, 2011.

Excerpts:

But here’s the case: one problem with our current tax policy is that at the moment the American people as a whole are receiving a dollar of government for the price of only 60 cents.  (I don’t say a “dollar’s worth of government,” but let’s leave that snark for another time.)  Any time you can get a dollar of something at a 40 percent discount, you are going to demand more of it.  My theory is simple: if the broad middle class of Americans are made to pay for all of the government they get, they may well start to demand less of it, quickly.

In other words, if you want to limit government spending, instead of starving the beast, serve the check.  (Well, I can hear everyone now, there’s goes your invitation to Grover Norquist’s Wednesday meetings! True that.) Right now the anti-tax bias of the right has the effect of shifting costs onto future generations who do not vote in today’s elections, and enables liberals to defend against spending restraints very cheaply.  Time to end the free ride.

HKO Comments:

The problem with health insurance is that the consumers sense that they are not spending their own money and they thus over consume.  The employer, the insurance company or too often the government handles the bill.  Hayward cleverly uses the same rationale for the consumption of government services.

It is clear for anyone who actually cares about facts over ideology that there is simply not enough wealth among the wealthy to fund the deficit.  We know that it is easy to tax the wealthy if we never define who they are.  But the reality of numbers is that it would have to be defined much less than $250,000 to produce anywhere near enough revenues to impact the disastrous deficits at our feet.

Our biggest mistake may have been making the tax system too progressive, giving the lower wage earners discounted services.  It is time to serve them the check.  Perhaps we need to push for a tax increase.  Voters will continue to over consume government services they get at a discount.

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