To Lou Dobbs on Taxation
To Lou Dobbs,
Greetings and Salutations from one of your many fans. Though this is a negative comment, you should know I have been watching/reading you for a very long time and I love how you fight for the middle class.
Two nights (October 27th) ago you had on Prof. Charles Calomiris. He said something I found pretty unsettling, but worse was that you let him get away with. He said, “But when 30 percent of the people pay zero taxes”
Either he misunderstands the difference between the word “tax” and “federal income tax” or he was just lying. Since he is a Professor of a College of Business, both are worrisome. I’ve worked in retail/restaurant my whole life. I know everyone pays taxes. We pay Payroll taxes, state income taxes, social security taxes, unemployment taxes, and a whole host of letter soup taxes I don’t understand. Atop that, we pay toll tax, sales tax, registration tax, gas tax, utility tax, and last, but not least, federal income tax. I’m sure I missed a good few dozen taxes levied against us, but you get my post.
Even if certain people pay zero income tax, no one pays zero taxes. And the difference between the two is huge.
As you’ve argued for years now, the middle class is hurting. Most taxes are regressive, the more you make the lower the percentage you pay. People at the top look at their annual taxes, see that federal income tax is their heaviest burden, assume that’s the largest tax of everyone else, and then think they’re getting screwed. They don’t even realize how high a percentage of income we pay in taxes at the bottom. I’d really love to see you remind some of these people that folks making less than 50 thousand a year still pay a lot in taxes.
The middle class will continue to struggle for a long time if we can’t even get them to realize there is a struggle to pay taxes even on us at the bottom.
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