Friday, September 19, 2003
(9:33 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Want to become angry?
This first link, courtesy of Atrios (as are virtually all the links that any leftist/liberal blogger ever posts), should go a long way toward making you angry. Judging from the account given therein, the government is luring immigrants to what seem like routine appointments, then deporting them for no apparent reason -- instantly. That is not the kind of country I want to be living in.
This second link, from the usually very good but sometimes rather obscure Sullywatch, rounds up a variety of articles on tax issues. The bottom line: conservatives need to stop acting like the federal income tax is the only tax in this country. The lowest 20% of the population, income speaking, pays about 20% of their income in taxes, some of which are actually regressive in structure. Only the top 20% earners pay a higher percentage. Here's a nice paragraph from TAPped that I think sums it up well:
What's most disheartening is that this lie [that the poor don't pay any taxes] isn't necessary in order to explain the supposed goals of conservatism. The fact that the average American, rich or poor, pays roughly the same percentage of his or her income in taxes does not contradict the belief that the government spends too much, or that taxes in general are too high. So an obsession with this idea that the poor "don't pay taxes" seems to indicate that for many conservatives, shifting the tax burden to lower-income Americans ranks higher on the list of priorities than, say, reducing the size of government. Guess who's practicing class warfare now?
