These worries were based on my observation that whenever I hear him talk about these things, for the most part, he doesn't address the attacks that right-wingers use against those ideas. Plus, he tends to say things that the right would pounce on and use against him.
This, to me, was a sign that Bernie isn't really familiar with these "arguments" and has never really engaged in the kind of tough, rigorous debates that would have prepared him for the kind of question Chris Wallace asked him the other day on Fox News Sunday.
Wallace brought up a favorite FoxNews line of argument -- which they've been using for years to convince their audience that it's the wealthy who pay all of the taxes. From crooksandliars.com:
WALLACE: Senator, one of the central points in your campaign, you say it over and over again, is that the American economic system is, in your words, rigged. But I want to go over some numbers with you. In 1981, the top 1 percent paid 17 percent of all income taxes. Now the top 1 percent pays 37 percent. Question, sir, if the wealthy have rigged the system, why have they done such a lousy job of it?
Unfortunately, Bernie's response doesn't directly answer the question: "in recent years [there's been] a huge transfer of wealth from the middle class to the top 0.1 percent, whose percentage of wealth in America has doubled. We're talking about trillions of dollars going from the middle class to the top 0.1 percent."
This response may work with libs and Dems but in the eyes of the Republiconservalibertarians, Wallace just exposed Bernie for the clueless dope and promoter of class warfare that they always "knew" he was.
The "huge transfer of wealth from the middle class to the top 0.1 percent" line is sure to enrage the right-wing talkers. As far as they're concerned, the wealthy are doing all of the heavy lifting and paying all of the taxes. They've earned their wealth with their hard work and good ideas. The rest of us are just ungrateful beneficiaries of their benevolence.
Bernie's "transfer of wealth" line will give them the ammunition that they will use to attack Bernie for his socialism.
I can hear it now, "Bernie wants to take from the producers and give to the moochers! He wants to soak the rich! Class warfare! Makers and takers! Politics of envy! Socialist swine!"
Here's what I wish Bernie would have said:
"Yes, Chris, what you've just said is one of the central points in Fox News' campaign to cut taxes for the wealthy and cut programs for the non-wealthy. Those numbers that you chose to go over with me are very misleading for the following reasons. You said, and Fox News has been saying this over and over again, that the top 1% pay 37% of all income taxes. But that number is for federal income taxes and you said all income taxes. Many people who don't pay federal income taxes still pay state and local income taxes, which are much more regressive.
And as Josh Barro of Business Insider points out, the federal personal income tax only makes up 28% of all U.S. government tax collections. Federal, state and local governments collected $4 trillion in taxes last year; just $1.1 trillion of that was federal personal income tax. And people whose incomes are not high enough to pay federal personal income tax, do pay lots of those other taxes: payroll tax, state income tax, sales tax, property tax, excise taxes, and more. They also pay other taxes indirectly: workers bear the burden of employer-paid payroll taxes and part of the burden of corporate income taxes.
But I've heard Sean Hannity say over and over again, that 50% of Americans pay no taxes whatsoever.
Question, sir, why do you
guys at Fox keep saying things like that?
That's neither fair nor balanced.
Another point. You said; in 1981, the top 1 percent paid 17 percent of all income taxes. Now the top 1 percent pays 37 percent. Those numbers, by themselves, make it look like we are taxing the 1% more than ever. But in actuality, their tax rate has been reduced dramatically.
Let me point out that in 1981 the top marginal tax rate was 50%. In 2013, the year you referred to, the top marginal rate was only 35%. So, even though the tax rate is much lower now for the 1%, why do they pay a higher percentage of the federal income tax? The main reason for that, by far, is that the percentage of wealth in the top 1% has grown exponentially, while wages for the rest of America have been stagnant. Are the top 1% exponentially smarter or harder working than they were in 1981? Of course not. Are the poor and middle class less hard working? No. It's because the economy offers more opportunities for a few to make obscene amounts of money -- in many cases without creating jobs or doing anything good for society -- while offering less opportunity for the poor and middle class to find good jobs. Yet that wealth, which concentrates at the top, is created, in very large part, by the hard work of the poor and middle class. Without that work, that wealth would not be possible. This is why it is fair to redistribute some of that wealth.
Don't you think that would have given the Fox audience something to think about?
Instead of putting the right-wing talkers on the offense (Bernie wants to take from the producers and give to the moochers! He wants to soak the rich! Class warfare! Makers and takers! Politics of envy! Socialist swine!) it would have put them on the defense and forced them to address these other facts.
The time for Bernie to laugh would have been after Wallace's next question:
WALLACE: But, sir, isn't a lot of that because of the economic policies of President Obama and of the Federal Reserve, which put interest rates at basically zero?
Bernie: Do you mean President Obama, the Marxist?
Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Ah, ho, ho, ho, he, he, ha, ha...
No Chris, Ha, ha, ha,ha... it's just the nature of free market capitalism, ha, ha, ha, ho, ho, he, he...
Because this is not PBS, Wallace runs out of time and goes to commercial.
From Ezra Klein at Washington Post.
When all taxes paid are included. Click on image to enlarge:
No comments:
Post a Comment