On Taxes

Why do we have taxes?

Some would say it is to pad the purses of those in Washington and their big business cronies that they are beholden to.

It is difficult to refute this.

Certainly, this is what our current government has chosen to do with the money that they collect from us. But that is not what our founding fathers intended.

There is another purpose.

It is to assist the downtrodden among us. To lift up our brothers and sisters who have fallen on hard times. To bring us all together by making us more equal, monetarily speaking.

Our current and recent former administrations have failed terribly at this. The disparity between the poorest and richest of our people has grown far beyond what our founding fathers could have imagined. If our founding fathers could be here now, they would be vomiting with disgust. But it is not Dramamine that we need. It is a solution.

First, I propose that any family making less than the median household income ($48,201.00 in 2006, according to the US Census Bureau), not be required to pay any taxes whatsoever. Those that make less than the rest of us should not have to pay for our needs. If you take a friend to lunch and he makes less than you, it is natural to pay for it. I myself have never taken a friend to lunch, but I understand that this is a common practice.

Second, the tax rate would increase progressively from 0% for someone making the median income to 100% for someone making 10 times that ($482,010.00). All income in excess of that amount would go to help others.

Nobody needs to make more than that.

I know that there are naysayers among you who will claim that this will "hurt" the economy. Poppycock! According to the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Expenditure Survey, nearly half of all money spent in 2006 was by people making less than $70,000. Only %16 of the money spent was by those making $150,000 and above. If every person making more than $300,000 disappeared from the face of this earth, we would hardly notice it, fiscally speaking. And I personally would not miss them at all. If I wanted to spend my time with people, I'm sure that I would prefer to spend it with people who make approximately the same amount of money I make, not some rich people who think they're better than me and criticize my clothes or call me names behind my back or to my face or mistake me for some servant and say, "young man, please bring my Bentley around and take me to the club where I can play polo with my good friend Warren Buffet and laugh at your appearance". I'm not young.

Think about it.