The Rich Have Different Rules

I believe this is a serious problem in the United States -- that in our supposedly "progressive" tax system the rich are taxed at a far smaller rate than middle class workers. The reason this happens is that they have gotten Congress to declare that the type of income they mostly make (investment income or "capital gains") is somehow more important to the welfare of this country than the type of income (earned income) that the middle class mostly makes.

What makes this even more egregiously unfair is the fact that to make earned income requires real (and hard) work, while investment income requires no work at all -- just using money to make more money. Willard Mitt Romney is a good example of this. He didn't work a single day in 2010, and yet he made over $21 million (which was taxed at the lower income rate of investment income). In fact, because he gave money to his church, he didn't even have to pay the 15% tax rate of investment income.

It should make no difference how income is made. Capital gains (investment income) should be taxed at the same rate as earned income -- and those who make larger incomes should be taxed at a larger rate. That was the original idea of our progressive tax system, and we need to return to it.

I know that those of the right, who have bought into the propaganda of the rich, will accuse me of class warfare for promoting such a simple idea of fairness in taxation, or even worse, advocating income redistribution. I don't really care what they think or say. The "class war" has been going on for quite a while now. It was started when the rich, through their Republican puppets, decided they shouldn't have to pay a larger tax rate than other Americans (or even as large a tax rate as working Americans).

As for "income redistribution", income is always being redistributed in every society and every economic system. Our system has been tilted to favor the rich, so that far too much of our national income goes into their pockets, while the rest of America must fight for the crumbs left over. We used to have a fairer system, where all Americans could get a share of the economic pie. The rich still got rich, but other Americans also shared in the bounty this country had to offer. We need to return to that. It is a simple matter of fairness.