Michael Kinsley tells us that "although I favor Obama’s tax increase, I could not defend [a top marginal tax rate of] 90 cents on the dollar." Why not? Once you accept the liberal view of taxes, why not go all the way to a top rate of 100%? It's the Alice Trillin tax. She argued that, over a certain level, the government gets everything.
This got me to thinking, what's the total tax burden? Everything combined: income, FICA, state and local, property, sales, excise, etc.... The Tax Foundation reports:
The shift toward a lower tax burden since 2007 has been driven by three factors: (1) The recession has reduced tax collections even faster than it has reduced income; (2) President Obama and the Congress have enacted large but temporary income tax cuts for 2009 and 2010, just as President Bush did in 2008; and (3) Two significant taxes were repealed for 2010 as part of previous legislation, the estate tax and the so-called PEP and Pease provisions of the income tax.
The kicker, however, is that:
Despite all these tax reductions, Americans will pay more taxes in 2010 than they will spend on food, clothing and shelter combined.
I'd say that that's more than enough. If the government can't get by with what the rest of us spend on "food, clothing and shelter combined," the government's just going to have to learn to do with less.
Of course, if Kinsley wants to voluntarily make a contribution to the government, that's fine by me too.
