Taxes are good, they aren't bad. They are the way we help protect our common interests and pay for the common good. Redistribution of wealth is another way of talking about this and is generally viewed in a negative connotation. Redistribution of wealth, however, is how we move wealth from those that are working to those who are retired in a fashion we have benefited from since Social Security was passed into law. Redistribution of wealth is what happens when you pay firefighters and teachers out of a common chunk of change. Redistribution of wealth is how we pay for our military and the salaries and healthcare of those we elect to office. Extreme redistribution of wealth may be more what you're concerned about, so let's talk about what's on the table.
Obama wants to raise taxes on the wealthy to ~gasp~ what they were before W. Bush took office. This is not a huge increase in taxes. It's not even close to what the taxes were 20 years before W. Bush took office. Before Reagan took office, you have to go back to 1925 to find the last time we had the top tax bracket with a rate as low as the one Obama wants to implement. In fact, you'd have to go back that far to find a time when the top bracket was less than 1.5 times the rate Obama is proposing. That's right, from 1925-1981 we had the top bracket being taxed anywhere from 63% to 94% on the money within that bracket.... And there's where the tricky part is.... 63% to 94% doesn't mean that their income is taxed at 63% to 94%, it means that the money they earn over a certain amount (the amount that puts them into that bracket) is taxed at that rate.... the amount below is taxed at other rates, just like everyone. If I make $50,000 and you make $40,000, and the tax bracket break point is at $40,000, then I'm going to pay the same taxes you do, plus $10,000 times whatever the new bracket's rate is. This is, of course, after all deductions are taken out. Deductions and credits are how we say "you are doing something that we want you to do and for which we feel your burden should eased a bit," such as purchasing your primary residence (morgage interest deduction), having kids (larger standard deduction), or paying for college (various options), essentially, we are making it more financially viable for those who make less to take these steps we consider to be beneficial to the greater good.
By contrast, Romney wants to reduce the tax rates of everybody and then remove deductions to pay for those tax rate changes. As mentioned before, deductions and credits are how we help people improve their lives by lessening the financial impact of certain choices, so what Romney is saying is that he wants to reduce taxes to make the tax code simpler and increase the financial cost of certain activities. When it comes time to name these certain activities, he's completely unwilling to do so, but the sheer cost of the reduction in tax rates essentially forces the removal of deductions and credits to be a larger burden for the lower and middle classes than to the upper class.
These are the choices we face. Mind you, with a Republican (and very far right-wing)controlled House and a nearly even split Senate, it's hard to believe that Obama's tax increases will pass, though much easier to believe Romney's tax cuts will likely pass by with cheerful shouts of glee, deficit-hawkishness-be-damned.
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