In the name of “fairness,” writes Stephen Moore, an economist at the Heritage Foundation, President Obama would like to raise the capital gains and dividend taxes to 28%, which is almost twice what they were when he was elected president. He would also like an effective inheritance tax rate of over 50%.
According to the Obama fib, the rich don’t pay any taxes. But as Mr. Moore points out, “The top 10 percent pay two-thirds of the income tax. And the bottom 50 percent—all Americans with an income below the median—pay just 3 percent of the income tax.”
According to a study by the Tax Foundation, the U.S. federal income tax has the dubious honor of being one of the most progressive tax systems in the world. “Almost no other industrialized nation depends on the rich to pay the bills more than the United States,” says Scott Hodge, president of Tax Foundation.
Mr. Moore believes that a lot of problems could be solved in this country if politicians in both parties would listen to what JFK said in 1962 at the New York Economics Club: “It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now.” Read more from Mr. Moore here.
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