Raising Tax Inequality?

The San Diego newspaper (well, it looks like a newspaper until you read it), which bears the rather weird name of U-T San Diego, had a headline on the front page yesterday which read, “Obama plan raises tax inequality.” The article itself does suggest, in a meandering and indirect way, that some people like the plan because they think that taxing the rich is good, while others dislike the plan because they are rich and don’t want to pay more taxes.

The headline is, I suppose, making some sort of ignorant and misguided counter to talk of “income inequality,” and the writer of it is unaware that our income tax system is, and has been since its inception, a progressive income tax, based on the principle that taxes should be levied on each citizen based on ability to pay.

Over the years various corrupt politicians have made the tax less and less progressive, and Obama’s proposal is to take a timid and utterly inadequate step toward restoring the progressive nature of the tax. His plan should, indeed, be criticized; not for “raising tax inequality,” forsooth, but for doing far too little to restore the progressiveness of our income tax and for his monstrously idiotic plan to “make corporate taxes more competitive,” which is Obama-speak for reducing them.

The U-T San Diego should be used exclusively for starting fires in your fireplace or for lining garbage cans, bird cages, and cat litter boxes.