Middle Class Invisibility

Transcript: David Brancaccio Interviews David Cay Johnston on NOW, Feb, 13, 2004

DAVID BRANCACCIO: Broader picture, though, on this. Is it really significant for our democracy that there's this transfer of burden for paying taxes to the middle class?

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: Oh, it's terribly important. You know, every society in history that's lost its tax base doesn't exist anymore. And there's no written in stone guarantee that this wonderful country will always exist. We have to work at it to make it exist.

If we shift the burden as we're doing continually off of the people who already have enormous wealth onto the people who are in the middle class and the upper middle class, what we're doing is we're punishing strivers. We're punishing people who say, "My life is not just about accumulating wealth." Which-- there's nothing wrong with that. "But my life might be about public service. I want to be a police officer or a school teacher or a nurse." We are discouraging people-- and taking away their ability to save for the future. We are taking away their ability to finance education for their children.

When government imposes taxes it makes decisions about who prospers and who carries the burden. And Americans can choose to have a tax system where the middle class subsidizes the rich. If we want to do that, that-- our Constitution, we ought to do that. But I don't believe if most Americans in the middle class had any idea that they're subsidizing the super rich, that they would be going around supporting these tax plans.

But our politicians aren't telling them that. Our politicians are responding as classic economic theory says that they should be doing it, to their real patrons. And those are their campaign donors.
Posted on The Human Stain