Let Them Eat Garbage

This is it. This is exactly it. This is what liberals have been talking about, writing about, worrying about, warning about, and screaming about. Progressive taxes may be “unfair” in principal to the wealthy class, but regressive taxes on the poor and little or no taxes on the rich mean suffering, disease, misery, and death for millions of people.

Low taxes on the richest people, on the big corporations do not make a stronger, better America. Do not create jobs. Do not empower the rugged individual.

Low taxes on the rich mean an infrastructure in a state of disrepair. They mean overcrowded, under-performing public schools. They mean a decline in access to healthcare for an ever-increasing population of an impoverished underclass. They mean an increase in crime.

Low taxes also mean a government ill-equipped to react to an emergency. It isn’t just the lack of funds. It is the lack of compassion. The lack of understanding. The indifference to suffering. Indeed, other bloggers have said it, and I agree. Since the time of Ronald Reagan, it has become fashionable in this country to celebrate the wealthy and to despise the poor. To blame the poor for being poor. To pretend that poor people are poor because they are lazy, and that all they need to do is pick themselves up by the bootstraps, spit in their hands and get to work.

America received a wake-up call last week. We were reminded that everyone couldn’t just hop in their cars, drive to another state and check into a Hilton to ride out the storm. Some people really don’t have a enough money for the barest of essentials. Some people have to choose between heat and gasoline so they can drive to work. Some people have to choose between medication for themselves and food for their children. It is obscene that in the richest nation of the world, people have become more concerned about the tax-burden of the wealthy than the suffering of the poor.

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Jill, over at Ob-La-Blog has written a fine companion piece, titled "A Lesson in Poverty."