I read an article on the Wall Street Journal’s Opinion Journal by Ari Fleischer, a former press secretary for President George W. Bush, now president of Ari Fleischer Communications, entitled “Everyone Should Pay Income Taxes“.

Here are some excerpts from the article:

… A very small number of taxpayers — the 10% of the country that makes more than $92,400 a year — pay 72.4% of the nation’s income taxes. They’re the tip of the triangle that’s supporting virtually everyone and everything. Their burden keeps getting heavier.

… According to the CBO, those who made less than $44,300 in 2001 — 60% of the country — paid a paltry 3.3% of all income taxes. By 2005, almost all of them were excused from paying any income tax. They paid less than 1% of the income tax burden. Their share shrank even when taking into account the payroll tax. In 2001, the bottom 60% paid 16.3% of all taxes; by 2005 their share was down to 14.3%. All the while, this large group of voters made 25.8% of the nation’s income.

When you make almost 26% of the income and you pay only 0.6% of the income tax, that’s a good deal, courtesy of those who do pay income taxes. For the bottom 40%, the redistribution deal is even better. In 2001, these 43 million Americans, who earn less than $30,500, made 13.5% of the nation’s income but paid no income tax. Instead, they received checks from their taxpaying neighbors worth $16.3 billion. By 2005, those checks totaled $33.3 billion.

In addition to exempting almost 50% of the country from income taxes, today nearly every other social cause is given a loophole — or a preference — in the tax code. Want to buy a hybrid vehicle? You get a tax break. Do you own a solar water heater? You get a credit. Want to give to charity? You get a deduction. Own a house? There’s another tax deduction for you. How about college savings, certain medical costs, and retirement savings? Yes, yes, and of course yes. Did you move, pay alimony, or “provide housing to a Midwestern displaced individual”? More deductions, credits and exemptions there too, if you qualify.

Here is my response to Mr. Fleischer:

I hear a lot of whining from rich people about the redistribution of wealth. I would remind them that when they, over time, lower worker’s benefits, make each worker do more and more work while firing more and more workers, and raise the prices for their goods and services, they themselves are guilty of the redistribution of wealth.

When the government lowers or removes taxes from the poor, they are just helping to correct the damage done by the greed of the rich.

If the rich included these facts in their arguments, they would appear inhumanely self interested, so they conveniently ignore this basic truth: money doesn’t come from nowhere.

If you have a lot of it, chances are, it’s because of the hard work of many other people, and they don’t have a lot of it.

And don’t give me the old “anyone can succeed and prosper with hard work and good intentions and build their own company and or fortune” answer; this would only be true if the people and companies who are already wealthy did not use that money to influence those in power in the government through lobbying, tax loopholes, and secret bribes. It is hard enough for a small business owner to try and compete with corporations without them using cheap overseas labor and getting politicians to pass laws that are more favorable to them than they are to their workers or to competing small business owners.

The wealthiest 10% of the country may pay more than 10% of the income tax, but this is because they have more than 90% of the wealth. I doubt that Mr. Fleischer has ever tried to survive at the $10K, $20K, or $30K annual income level, or his article would have a drastically different perspective. Most people in this country, even those who work full time, or overtime, or 2 jobs, can barely afford to pay for all the basic aspects of life that the wealthy take for granted, while at the same time, the wealthy are profiting far more from their labor than they ever will.

What percentage of the sale of most products or services goes to pay the worker, and what percentage goes to the executive?. I don’t know the percentages, myself, but the fact that most CEOs make more in a year than most people in do in a lifetime, with many making more hundreds of thousands of times more than their workers, is very telling indeed. When you make tens of millions of dollars a year, it might seem unfair if you have to pay a few hundred thousand in taxes. But keep in mind, these people exploit far more tax of the loopholes, preferences, deductions, credits, and exemptions that Mr. Fleischer argues against than the poor ever do, especially since the rich have well-paid, knowledgeable tax attorneys do their taxes, while the poor do not. If there truly were no tax loopholes, those who make tens or hundreds of millions (or billions) would pay far more in taxes than they do now, so the rich shouldn’t be arguing against loopholes. Notice how Mr. Fleischer only mentions deductions and credits which are common to poor people? I don’t see him say that the rich shouldn’t be able to use tax shelters like giving millions to their spouses (like Bernie Madoff), giving billions to their own or their friends’ foundations (Warren Buffet), filing bankruptcy after buying yachts, jets, cars, and mansions, or any of those kinds of things.

You might argue that, being poor, this response of mine is self-interested. Perhaps that is true. However, I hope it illustrates just how self interested Mr. Fleischer’s arguments are as well.