This skewed reality is the result of a growing number of absolutely legal escape hatches. Consider what happens to those in the lowest bracket. Say a person earns $12,000. After subtracting the personal exemption, the standard deduction and assuming no tax credits, then applying the 10% rate of the lowest bracket, the person ends up paying a little less than 4% of income in taxes. It ain\u2019t peanuts, but not enough to get his or her blood boiling with tax rage.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\nGotta love a paper that has the audacity to bitch about how people well below the poverty line aren\u2019t pulling their weight. Lucky ducky!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We have lots of \u201csocialist\u201d programs. We have socialized national defense (it doesn\u2019t run for profit, does it?), socialized banking (do you like that Federal Reserve guarantee on your bank account?), socialized transportation (Do you like driving on roads?), socialized food production (subsidies for corn farmers, anyone?) and so on. As I think about it, most of these social programs seem to disproportionately benefit those with money. Roads are most useful if you have a car. Bank subsidies are most useful if you have money to put in the bank. Wars are most useful if you invest in defense contractors. That last is actually one of the most callous \u201cjobs\u201d programs ever \u2013 in my opinion. We can\u2019t have a public works program, but we can ship you overseas to get blown up. That\u2019s how awesome we are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We need to start to call out greed and hypocrisy where we see it. We need to point and laugh when rich people point their fat fingers at the poor and say that people living on 10-fold less money ought to pony up and pay more taxes. This is the same pointing and laughing that will force lying hypocritical hate-mongers out of the republican party and out of the pulpits. If you start from \u201cholier than thou,\u201d then you better damn well be holy. There is to be no claim of moral superiority and understanding of the \u201csanctity of marriage,\u201d either from adulterous governors or pedophile priests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The health care bill that congress passed last month is far from perfect \u2013 but at least it\u2019s *something* \u2013 and it starts from the right idea. In the richest and most powerful nation in the world \u2013 it is a moral failing that we fail to provide the basics of human existence for every human being within our borders. Every human being. The fact that someone was born in another country does not mean that I can ignore them as they starve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s be clear on the limits of my \u201csocialism:\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
* I\u2019m not talking about a standalone single family house for every human being, I\u2019m talking about \u201cshelter.\u201d
* I\u2019m not talking about steak every day, I\u2019m talking about \u201chealthy, clean food.\u201d
* And I\u2019m not talking about unlimited medical care, but yes \u2013 \u201cmedical care.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These are not rights of the poor, per se. There is no right to health care. It\u2019s actually much harder than that: These are obligations that I think that we owe our fellow human beings by dint of having enough to spare. Yes, we must be smart about it. Yes, we must be careful that our aid does not create a generation of addicts and derelicts \u2013 but the WSJ crowd forgets is that is is our moral obligation<\/strong> to figure out how to do this.<\/p>\n\n\n\nLucky duckies. Harumph.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The health care reform bill brought the bogus demonization of \u201csocialized\u201d programs by conservatives front and center. It bugs me when people whine about how we shouldn\u2019t have \u201csocialized\u201d medicine \u2013 and it bugs me more when they claim that every dollar they have is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1685"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1686,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1685\/revisions\/1686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}