When it comes to the American economy, there is one fundamental lie and one fundamental truth and it is up to you which you choose to believe. Tax Day is really a chance to ask: “Which side am I on?”

The lie is that if the maximum freedom and, thus, maximum benefits are given to the super-rich elites, ultimately everyone will win because the super-rich will create companies and create jobs and buy things and that will benefit the rest of us. It’s been called various things over various times — Reaganomics, trickle down economics, free market capitalism. But mostly it’s just been called ********.

The average five-year-old could tell you the truth — that if you want to create the most amount of opportunity and prosperity for the most amount of people, it makes much more sense to spread opportunity and prosperity from the get-go rather than give it all to the top and pray it will spread. ******** economists — who are mostly from elite backgrounds, educated in elite institutions, and invested in preserving the elite status quo — have been trying for decades to persuade us to believe their lie rather than the common sense truth. Their lie led our economy right into the toilet, but the ******** economists and their Wall Street pals are still scrambling to convince us that they’re the solution, not the problem.

The anti-tax agenda perpetuates the lie. In a currently uneven economy where wealth and privilege easily reproduce themselves while it’s harder and harder to climb from the bottom or the middle up the economic ladder, taxes are the primary way we as a society redistribute money to all the hardworking Americans who deserve their fair share and a fair shake. Sure, those Harvard-educated bank CEOs work hard, but do they work 300 times harder than you? Their pay is based not on hard work but on ******** economics that favor the already-rich. Taxes are our way of saying, “Hey, good for you for making a bazillion dollars, but since you’ll still be rich with a bajillion, we’re going to use some of your money to help other have a shot.”

Picture the classic image of rich titans of industry sitting around a wood-paneled private club, animal heads on the walls, butlers with white gloves — the exclusivity of the rich enjoying their riches together while plotting how to get richer. Government is the clubhouse for the rest of us. Public schools, roads, electricity, Medicaid and Medicare, veteran’s benefits — government helps the rest of us have the things we need in life, the otherwise only the super-rich could afford.

Think about it. If there was no public water system in your town, the rich could import gallons of water from wherever, pay staff to wash their clothes in the river and boil water to drink, and so on. What would you do?

The rich want you to think that government is a bad idea for YOU because it’s really a bad idea for THEM. They would be more than happy to keep their tax money, send their kids to $30,000-a-year private schools, pay thousands out of pocket to get a cavity filled, fly a private plane here and there because highways would be ruined. But since there aren’t enough super-rich folks to rule elections (though they keep trying with corporate donations to candidates) they need our help, too. They need the rest of us to swallow their lie so they can keep getting richer and, as taxes decline by our own doing, the rest of us fall further and further into despair.

This isn’t to say government is perfect. We need a much more accountable, transparent and participatory politics in America. But thinking that if government doesn’t work perfectly then it doesn’t work at all is part of the lie. At a time when free market capitalism in its current form has failed us wildly, we’re not questioning the fundamentals of that system remotely as much as we should. But one minor or major misstep on the part of government, and we’re ready to throw the baby out with the bath water. We’re that brainwashed to believe the lie.

Last year, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said the people of Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands, who pay the highest taxes in the world, are also the happiest people in the world. Taxes don’t just benefit poor people. Taxes are what create shared prosperity and keep the middle class prosperous.

This Tax Day, as you’re dropping your return in the mail (or pressing that e-send button), instead of reinforcing the pro-rich, anti-tax lie and sighing grumpily as you do your duty, look around at everything your taxes are paying for, everything that helps you in your daily life — from the subsidized post office to the government-created Internet, to the roads and the water and the parks and the schools and the fire fighters and the stop signs and everything in between. Paying your taxes is your way to get America back on the right track for all of us, to reject the lie that helps the rich get richer and instead create a shared economy that benefits everyone.

© 2010 Sally Kohn's Movement Vision Lab
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/14-7

Actually, this article is BS, unless you define the "super rich" as the political class. Read Mises' "Human Action", Rothbard's history of Economics, and Hazlitt's "Economics In One Lesson" to understand why.

I think its a good assesment and a great article. The Political class is purchased by the elites anyhow they do not operate independantly. If they did we wouldnt be in the fix we are now.

If anyone takes seriously an article that states "Last year, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said the people of Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands, who pay the highest taxes in the world, are also the happiest people in the world. Taxes don’t just benefit poor people. Taxes are what create shared prosperity and keep the middle class prosperous." they are either ignorant of economics or are simply using wishful thinking. The quoted assertion has been disproven over and over again for 200+ years.

Disney World claims the distinction of being "the happiest place on earth," but if you're really in search of human bliss, you'd be surprised where you'll find it.

Social scientists say Danes are the happiest group of people in the world.Is there a place where people facing the daily grind of life are somehow nudged by their surroundings or their values or their government into being the happiest people on the planet?

You might expect that place would be a tropical paradise with warm sand and soft breezes. Or a Mediterranean village with sun-kissed vineyards. Or the United States -- land of the free and home of the brave. But if you use social science techniques, you'll find some surprises. A paradise like Fiji comes in more than 50 spots below Iceland in happiness rankings. For all its style and cuisine, France and Italy rank well below Canada. And while the United States may be the richest and most powerful country, when it comes to happiness, it is only No. 23.

For the past decade, social scientists and pollsters have given elaborate questionnaires to hundreds of thousands of people around the globe. Two of the largest studies that rank the happiness of countries around the world are the World Map of Happiness from the University of Leiscester and the World Database of Happinessfrom Ruut Veenhoven of Erasmus University Rotterdam. All the happiness surveys ask people basically the same question: How happy are you?

"The answer you get is not only how they feel right now, but also how they feel about their entire life," explained Dan Buettner, who has studied happiness and longevity around the world through his Blue Zones project Buettner said that if you mine all the databases of universities and research centers, you'll find that the happiest place on earth is ? Denmark. Cold, dreary, unspectacular Denmark.

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=4086092&page=1

I don't know about anyone else....but I am MORE than happy to hand over half of my money, in the form of one tax or another, when my bills keep going up.

Gas keeps going up....Michigan is rated as one of the worst states in the country as far as road conditions....the electric company just raised its rates AGAIN....Detroit schools ( where the majority of tax money for education goes ) are rated among the worst in the country.

So WHERE, exactly, is the " good " that my money goes toward??

MAN do I LOVE living paycheck to paycheck.

So when is some of that " wealth " that the Dems promised to " spread " gonna come MY way??

So far...all I see is them taking MY ability to live, if not comfortably, to hand out to someone else.

Define 'super-rich' ... I think you mean anyone who has 25¢ more than YOU have ... Envy's such a be-yotch ...

I don't slam the rich.If it wasn't for them the USA would look like Mexico.

http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html


The top-earning 25 percent of taxpayers (AGI over $66,532) earned 68.7 percent of the nation's income, but they paid more than four out of every five dollars collected by the federal income tax (86.6 percent). The top 1 percent of taxpayers (AGI over $410,096) earned approximately 22.8 percent of the nation's income (as defined by AGI), yet paid 40.4 percent of all federal income taxes. That means the top 1 percent of tax returns paid more in federal individual income taxes than the bottom 95 percent of tax returns.

I dont know if the super rich know me, but I certainly dont hate taxes anymore than i hate paying a house note or rent,,,

you have to give some to have some,,,I am one who feels its worth the return