What seems more likely: that the government needs to reign in its spending excesses or that the middle class, already suffering under the yoke of inflation and taxation, needs to pick up an even bigger piece of the tax bill each year?
According to Mike Gibbons, a former investment banker running for Ohio’s open Senate seat, the answer is that the middle class needs to foot a larger chunk of the bill. He said as much when speaking to the Heartland Signal, saying:
“The top 20 percent of earners in the U.S. pay 82 percent of federal income tax … and, you do the math, and 45 percent to 50 percent don’t pay any income tax, you can see the middle class is not really paying any kind of a fair share depending on how you want to define it.”
Ohio GOP Senate candidate Mike Gibbons on a Crain’s Cleveland Business podcast:
“The top 20% of earners in the U.S. pay 82% of federal income tax — and, you do the math, and 45% to 50% don’t pay any income tax… The middle class is not really paying any kind of a fair share.” pic.twitter.com/VUYzPTlqmX
— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) April 8, 2022
For one, the argument is facially dumb, as the top 20% of earners are the ones who make a huge chunk of the money, so it’s not like their paying an outsized amount in tax compared to those who are just barely struggling to get by is unfair or unreasonable. That’s because when you look at the share of gross income earned by the top 20% compared to the percentage of taxes they pay, it is true that they pay a slightly outsized amount, but it’s far from an unreasonable one.
Mr. Gibbons and his banking buddies might be upset by that, but their millions are largely disposable, whereas the income of the guy making $45,000 a year isn’t, and the disparity in income shows why people like him are paying more.
Beyond that, his argument that the middle class isn’t paying its “fair share” is simply incorrect, as Breitbart reports, saying:
In actuality, economists at the University of California, Berkeley have found that America’s wealthiest income earners now pay an overall lower tax rate than all other Americans.
The economists found that, in 2018, the nation’s top economic elite are paying lower federal, state, and local tax rates than the nation’s working and middle class. Overall, these top 400 wealthy Americans paid just a 23 percent tax rate — a 47 percentage point reduction compared to what they paid, 70 percent, in 1950.
The middle class is already struggling. The damage wrought by bankers like Mr. Gibbons and the rest of the financier/consultant class has been severe, with factories shipped off to China so fat cats can make a percentage or two better return while those surviving American businesses are bought up and dismantled by corporate raiders like Mitt Romney.
The wealth of those financiers, speculators, and consultants might have soared, but the little guy is struggling under the jackboot of globalization and the middle class has been devastated as a result.
So, Mr. Gibbons might think he’s clever in pointing out that people like him pay a bit more in income tax than the guy struggling to get by after the factory he worked in was shipped off to Red China by Mr. Gibbons’ buddies, but that’s the worldview of the old, silk-stockings GOP, not the MAGA movement.
The middle class doesn’t need to pay more in taxes. The government just needs to spend less.
By: Gen Z Conservative, editor of GenZConservative.com. Follow me on Parler and Gettr.
This story syndicated with permission from Will, Author at Trending Politics
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