But Ms. Strassel is quite a different story. Her opinion piece published today oh-so-cleverly compares Obama to a magician. And she manages, inexplicably and tediously, to construct a full 11 paragraphs devoted entirely to elaborating upon her witty idea. The trite content of her piece - filled with catchy phrases like "Abracadabra!", "Presto!", "a flick of his finger", "Hocus Pocus!" and "Tada!" - is overshadowed only by her elitism and utter disdain for the people of this country who actually have to work hard to get by today. She states (and please excuse the insulting use of sarcasm - it's a direct quote):
To kick off our show tonight, Mr. Obama will give 95% of American working families a tax cut, even though 40% of Americans today don't pay income taxes! How can our star enact such mathemagic? How can he "cut" zero? Abracadabra! It's called a "refundable tax credit." It involves the federal government taking money from those who do pay taxes, and writing checks to those who don't. Yes, yes, in the real world this is known as "welfare," but please try not to ruin the show.
What Ms. Strassel fails to mention is that, first of all, the "40% of Americans who don't pay taxes" includes all of the dependents of adults who are not required by the current tax code to pay federal taxes. So apparently your 3 children under the age of 12 are seen by Ms. Strassel as people who should be paying taxes. Readjusted to reflect reality, then, the number of American earners who don't pay taxes is actually about 20%. She also fails to mention that the vast majority of people who fall below the cutoff for paying federal income taxes (93% of them at least), make less than $30,000 yearly. And another 4% earn under $40,000 yearly.
She does have a point when she states (again, pardon the condescending language - hers not mine):
For his next trick, the Great Obama will jumpstart the economy, and he'll do it by raising taxes on the very businesses that are today adrift in a financial tsunami! That will include all those among the top 1% of taxpayers who are in fact small-business owners, and the nation's biggest employers who currently pay some of the highest corporate tax rates in the developed world.
However, I feel I need to point out that first of all, not all of the people included in the top 1% of taxpayers are small-business owners. Some of them are CEOs of large corporations, attorneys, overpaid members of editorial boards, etc. And to be in the top 1% of taxpayers, you had to have an adjusted gross income of over $388,806 (that figure is from 2006 - I doubt it has changed much since then). Let me repeat that - one has to earn over $388,000 to be in the top 1% of taxpayers. And yes, they do indeed shoulder the majority of the federal tax burden in this country. But who, if not those people, can afford to pay taxes? Our founding fathers wrote the Constitution based on the desire to create a unified country and society, not to benefit 1% of the population. As John Adams wrote in 1776:
Government is instituted for the common good; for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people; and not for profit, honor, or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men; therefore, the people alone have an incontestable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to institute government; and to reform, alter, or totally change the same, when their protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness require it.
And although Ms. Strassel tries to make us feel sorry for the corporations in this country who pay such high corporate tax rates, she fails to mention an important fact. IT IS THE INDIVIDUAL AMERICAN TAXPAYER WHO SHOULDERS THE MAJORITY OF THE CORPORATE TAX BURDEN, in the form of higher prices, lower wages, and poorer returns on investments. The average American household in fact pays $3,190 yearly for corporate income taxes, to the tune of $370 billion total in 2007. That amount accounts for 70% of the total corporate tax burden for the year, which means that the corporations themselves (i.e. shareholders) pay only 30% of those taxes. Thus the "highest corporate tax rates in the developed world" aren't even paid for by the corporations. They are paid for by us, the American taxpayers. And it gets even better. It turns out that the poorest households are the ones who share the largest burden of those corporate taxes (based on percent of income).
I could go on for quite a while longer pointing out the other distortions, half-truths, and lies contained in this article, but it's getting really irritating to have to keep reading her article. Before I end, though, I have to wonder how it is that Ms. Strassel came to write such a piece. Yes, it is an opinion, and therefore she is entitled to say whatever she wants in it. But I would have hoped that there was at least a small amount of attention to actual facts. Ms. Strassel throws out all sorts of "facts" in the article, but neglects to cite any references. That in itself makes all her information suspect. So is it that she is intentionally deceptive, lying simply to try to sway people to her opinion? Or is it a matter of not understanding the information? She received a Bachelor's Degree from Princeton, but hasn't pursued any graduate level work. This may explain why she uses data that are patently wrong, applied incorrectly, or misinterpreted by her. She may not have the background to analyze complex issues like tax burden, foreign policy, and politics.
Either way, her opinion piece would be called more appropriately "fantasy fiction". At least I could laugh about it then.
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