This is beginning to feel like a race to the bottom:
Amid complaints about high taxes and calls for a smaller government, Americans paid their lowest level of taxes last year since Harry Truman's presidency, a USA TODAY analysis of federal data found.
Federal, state and local taxes — including income, property, sales and other taxes — consumed 9.2% of all personal income in 2009, the lowest rate since 1950, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports. That rate is far below the historic average of 12% for the last half-century. The overall tax burden hit bottom in December at 8.8.% of income before rising slightly in the first three months of 2010.
"The idea that taxes are high right now is pretty much nuts," says Michael Ettlinger, head of economic policy at the liberal Center for American Progress. The real problem is spending,counters Adam Brandon of FreedomWorks, which organizes Tea Party groups. "The money we borrow is going to be paid back through taxation in the future," he says. (Link)
I don't like paying taxes. I reckon no one does. But this notion that either we're paying too much in taxes or, when pressed, conclude the solution to deficit spending is either to raise taxes on someone else (e.g., sin taxes) or cut whatever programs that don't effect us is crazily short sighted.
It's ironic that the ones that scream the most about the tax burden that we'll leave to our kids and grandchildren are the same ones that demand their taxes go ever lower. So much for their own sense of sacrifice.
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