There is an argument for taxing the poor. Net beneficiaries of taxation can think about government in a different way than net payers. They might begin to think like children, not like adult supporters of a shared enterprise in defense of the basic institutional framework that in turn supports civilization.
If Americans still took seriously the old republican idea of “no taxation without representation,” some might scandalously invert the mantra as “no franchise without net tax payment,” thus excluding all net tax consumers (politicians, subsidized poor and subsidized business folk) from voting. But that does seem outrageous.
It’s also unworkable. At some point of complexity, calculating net winners and net losers becomes impossible.
Democrats have happily added to that complexity. One odd wrinkle? They’ve so indiscriminately increased the number of taxes in Obamacare (twenty-one!) that they have seemingly taken up the cause of taxing the poor. “Even the lowest income families (earning less than about $19,000 in 2012) will be on the hook,” writes Chris Connover in Forbes, “for nearly $7,000 in Obamacare taxes over the decade that started last year.”
Of course, the poor aren’t the only to pay more under Obamacare. Connover estimates that those in the “top 2 percent” will “end up paying $177,000 over the same decade.”
None of this suggests to me that the net effect of Obamacare will be positive. It’s basically just another hyper-intrusive, reality-distorting government program that will make services more expensive in toto, providing a huge drag on medicinal progress as well.
Impoverishing most of us, along with “the poor.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
5 replies on “Tax the Poor!”
Doesn’t come CLOSE to taxing the poor like the invisible tax of dollar devaluation inherent in QE3. And they don’t even count that since it mainly effects the costs of food and energy, the main expenses of the poor.
2 comments. $7,000 over the decade.
That is (average) $700 per year, or just under $13,50 per week. Does not seem outrageous to me (I DO NOT LIKE OBAMA OR OBAMACARE). But still, a fuss over $13.50 per week? Seems excessive.
As to Drik’s comment- about food and energy__I agree – I am in a slightly better tax situation, and those two are killers for me. I have to use my car for my profession, and the gas costs are a killer. But the XL Pipeline might hurt some wealthy Demorat supporters and give jobs to working people, so its a a no go.
Throw all the slime out.
Jay — Does a monthly bill for $58.33 a month have no consequence? I’m not poor (though not as far from poor as I’d like, frankly) but a bill for $13.50 a week or $58.33 a month or $700 a year still doesn’t escape my attention … or my bitter complaints, for that matter.
😉
Blocking government employees and recipients of government money in excess of tax payments from voting is completely workable. Many states in the 19th century restricted voting to property owners. This is no different.
With these people removed from the franchise, politicians no longer have reasons to pander to them. Ending entitlement programs for the elderly would no longer be taboo, because most elderly couldn’t vote.
I agree with MingoV, Paul. We don’t need to calculate net winners and losers with perfect accuracy for the idea to have value.
Politically, it would pretty much be DOA, unfortunately. Even getting it on the ballot would take a staggering amount of money. The blocking campaign against the Nebraska spending cap initiative you coordinated a few years ago would be chump change compared to what this would trigger.
(I had a miserable time collecting signatures on that one. For this one, I’d expect $15 a sig and do it door to door.)