Why Only the Rich Should be Taxed
The Problem of Wealth
by KRISTINE MATTIS
Preface

The Center for the Study of Liberal Democracy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is an institute funded by the right-wing conservative Bradley Foundation. In April of 2013, the Center announced the “Bradley Freedom Prize” essay contest, in which they asked for a response to the question: “Do the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share of taxes? What amount would be fair and why?”…

The rich are indeed different than the rest.

They are more liable to lie, cheat, steal, and act unethically. It is precisely this behavior that enables their accumulation of wealth. According to Professor Martha Stout, author of The Sociopath Next Door, “the higher you go up the ladder… the great number of sociopaths you will find there.” Thus, it is not surprising that many of the richest, most powerful people in our society perpetrate tremendous damage and injustice. They more often lack empathy and pro-social behavior, while they take more and give less than their poorer counterparts. These negative attributes of the upper classes commonly manifest themselves in the form of lack of concern for the environment, for other species, and for other humans. Given that the ten richest Americans are all corporate/industrial magnates of one form or another, it is inevitable that tremendous damage has resulted from their industrial pursuits, both due to the nature of the wealthy individuals themselves and due to the nature of corporations. In addition, since corporations are considered people as per a Supreme Court decision, it is imperative that not only rich individuals, but corporations as well bear the burden of reimbursing society for the destruction they spread…

Moreover, the wealth of the richest Americans and the corporations that most of them represent could not have been accumulated without the use of and disposal of massive amounts of toxics and pollutants. ExxonMobil and BP were responsible for two of the largest ecological disasters in U.S. history – the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 and the BP/Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010. Much of the current and future costs of cleaning up the environment and caring for the organisms (including humans) made ill from their toxic chemicals will be a burden for taxpayers, despite any legal ramifications to the corporations involved…

Perhaps what is most pernicious about the rich in America is that not only do they create the environmental, medical, and social illnesses in our society, which we pay to remediate, but that we actually pay THEM to do so. The roads, buildings, utilities, and infrastructures that the corporations rely on are built by federal and local tax dollars. The U.S. military, which has been historically utilized around the world to secure natural resources for our corporations, comprises 19% of our national budget, plus a good bulk of our discretionary spending. Major corporations like Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin, Halliburton and Bechtel, and the rich who run them, directly profit from our spending on war. Furthermore, corporations routinely receive tax benefits and subsidies from the government to perform their services and produce their goods (or “bads” as the case may be). However, corporations only contribute 10% of the total tax revenue of the federal government compared to the 46% of governmental tax money generated by individual incomes.10 Further still, lower-income individuals contribute a far larger proportion of their incomes to taxes than do wealthier individuals and corporations. What is worse, many of the lowest-income citizens barely earn enough to live, yet they are forced to subsidize – through their tax dollars – the wealthiest, most destructive citizens and corporations…

Read more and see footnotes at The Problem of Wealth » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names.