Everyone Must Pay Taxes or America will Fail

Most of us have heard the statistics about how rich folks pay most of the country’s taxes, right? According to an article by Ari Fleischer titled “The Taxpaying Minority,” the top 1% of income earners pay 37% of the nation’s tax bill. The top 10% pay 40% and the bottom 40%, middle class pay less than 5%, and the bottom 40% of workers pay absolutely nothing. Heck, with the “earned” income tax credit the very bottom even gets paid by the federal government simply for the sake of existing.

With the Earned Income Tax Credit many of these patriots even receive handouts by the federal government, taken from the rest of the chumps who pay taxes. When a large percentage of the population has no vested interest in the fiscal solvency of the state, they are prone to demand increasingly irresponsible programs until a crisis forces change. The Romans called the crisis “civil war” after which a dictatorship was established.

Enabling people to vote to stick others with a tax bill will always lead in the direction of forcing the minority to pay for the majority. Right now we have 40% of the population being forced to pay for the other 60%. Even that is not enough - political candidates make careers out of promising the next income band that they will stick their bills to the next bracket.

Civilizations seem to have a fairly well-defined lifecycle. From initial growth there follows a period of properity up until citizens realize they can vote themselves gifts from the public treasury. British historian, Alexander Tyler, says “the majority will always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits…with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy.”

When something is free there is little incentive to limit consumption or portion resources for long-term health. Free Big Macs at McDonald’s would likely lead to obesity and a heartattack within a decade. The same goes for paying taxes, which are how we pay for the benefits living in a governed society affords. When we are not responsible for paying the bills that government generates we do not care so much for how much money is spent.

I hope America can get its act together and fix one of the only safeguards to ensuring our Democracy doesn’t devolve into apathetic, dependent, serfdom. The rich should pay more taxes since they derive greater benefit from government, but the middle class and poor also derive benefits for which they must pay their proportionate share. Pandering to these majority voting blocks by promising to stick it to the rich even more sounds great from a podium, but has only one inevitable outcome.

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