Wednesday, June 04, 2003

Why It’s OK to Eat Turkeys

The administrations own analysis of the tax cuts shows that the net effect is to increase the proportion of the tax burden paid by the middle class. No surprise there. Abusing the lower orders more than we already do is not rational, even for a plutocrat, since the earned income tax credit and other tax breaks to the working poor amount to a subsidy to the corporations who would otherwise have to pay a living wage to their more benighted employees just to allow them to live and reproduce. Meanwhile, the subsidy in question gets paid by the middling people, who are actually just working people with an expensive addiction to vanity. Well, you can’t blame a cannibal for preferring victims that have a little meat on their bones; and beasts that are easily herded as well as highly edible are the best of all.

By the way, to properly evaluate who really pays, it is necessary to take into account not only who pays what but who gets what. Thus the middling people only pay a slightly greater proportion than the rich under the tax plan, but they also get less and less for their money as the programs that benefit them die away while funding for the programs that benefit the wealthy increase.

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