Tuesday, December 04, 2012

NOT HYPOCRITICAL IN THE LEAST: Now the Left SIMPLY ADORES the Bush Tax Cuts

I'm stunned that vintage media ignores the hypocrisy of a Democrat Party that now urges extensions to the same "Bush Tax Cuts" they pilloried for a decade.

Opponents of the Bush tax cuts have done a silent flip-flop on whether those cuts helped the middle class.

With the so-called fiscal cliff approaching, politicians are virtually unanimous that the expiration of the Bush-era tax law presents a clear and present danger to the middle class. According to the White House, the typical middle class family’s taxes would jump by $2,200 per year. The president recently took this message directly to the people [...with the hashtag My2K...]

Curiously, however, hardly anyone has noticed that today’s sentiment is a flip-flop for just about any Democrat who has run for any political office any time in the past decade — from the presidency on down....
...In other words, if the Bush cuts actually were just “tax cuts for the rich,” then their expiration couldn’t hurt the middle class. On the other hand, if their expiration would hurt the middle class, then characterizing them as “tax cuts for the rich” was a false message all along.

[...American] history (available from the Tax Foundation) begs two questions. First: is it wise to assume that a feel-good increase in the top tax rate will really extract a higher share of the total taxes from the top earners? If so, by all means, let’s proceed — but we should at least understand that recent history doesn’t necessarily support our case. Second: just what is a “fair share”? The top 10 percent of income tax payers paid 64 percent of the burden when Clinton left office, and they are paying significantly more of the burden today — so if they’re not paying their “fair share” yet, they were even further away from paying their “fair share” under Clinton...

What, then, is the “fair share” of the top income tax payers: 80 percent of the total? 90 percent? 100 percent? If we don’t define “fair share,” we can never know whether we’ve reached — or unfairly overshot — the goal.

What is a "fair share" of your income -- your life -- that the government deserves?

Whatever they say it is, of course.

Remember, we no longer live in a Constitutional Republic.


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