Today is tax day, the day that the government takes some of the money you have earned and spends it as it sees fit. Tax policy is one of the issues that most strongly divides liberals and conservatives in this country, so today is the perfect opportunity to lay out just what the two sides’ philosophies on taxes are, and what results come about from these different tax policies.
No American, liberal or conservative, can deny that the government needs to raise revenue through taxation. To the conservative, taxes are a way for the government to raise the revenue it needs to carry out its legitimate functions, particularly those laid out in the Constitution. Maintaining the military and building roads, schools, bridges, and other vital public works should be funded by tax dollars since they would not exist on private dollars alone. The government must take a portion of each one of our salaries to fund these efforts. Since the benefits of all of these are publicly shared, the conservative feels that all people should pay a little bit. Everyone should have some stake in the system.Â
Liberals basically agree with conservatives on all of the above, with one key exception. Liberals feel that there is another purpose of taxation beyond simply raising revenue. They see taxation as a way to achieve some socially desirable ends. They seek to use the government’s coercive power to tax in order to distribute income from certain people to others, specifically from those who have considerable income to those that are somehow “wrongly†deprived of that income. Liberals feel that if one person is rich, it is only because he or she somehow “stole†that money from the person who is poor. They think that this is unfair, and the government should use its power to put that money back in “rightful†hands.Â
So should the government use its power to redistribute income from the rich to the poor? Isn’t this only fair since the rich have more than enough to go around? The answer is no. High taxes on the wealthy and on corporations create a huge disincentive to do business where taxes are high. Our state is a perfect example of this. (Did any of you even know that sales taxes just went up 1 percent on April 1?)Â
This state, run by “tax and spend†democrats for decades, has created an environment that is so unfriendly to businesses that the productive sector of California (those who actually pay taxes) are leaving in droves. The liberal democrats think that by raising taxes on Californians, they will get more money to fund their pet projects. Hardly! All this does is tell the people making money and creating jobs here to leave. Why work and create jobs in California when the government will just take the rewards away? Why not move those jobs to another state? Is it any wonder that our state is almost bankrupt and our unemployment is over 10 percent? The response from democrats is to raise taxes even higher.
California, you need to wake up. Students on this campus voted overwhelmingly for democrats in the last election. Thank God that Tony Strickland won, depriving the democrats of a super majority in the State Senate. If he had not won, the tax increases on April 1 would have been much worse. The liberal democrats running this state are only going to keep asking for more.
You may be tempted to think, “Yeah! Stick it to those rich assholes! Greedy bastards taking all our money!†Look where this ideology has gotten us. Good luck getting a job in this state when you graduate. We need to start electing fiscal conservatives like Senator Strickland who will cut taxes and bring these jobs back here. If it creates income inequality, so be it. I am willing to accept some guy getting super rich if it means that he can hire me and I can get a decent job. The Left is trying to build up class resentment by getting you to spend so much time getting pissed off at the rich that you don’t even notice them robbing you blind and bankrupting us all.Â
And you vote for them. Good job, UCSB.