Sunday, January 12, 2020

High Taxes - Fox News Stands Reality on its Head

Fox News manages to interject the phrase " high tax" as a caustic modifier almost every time it mentions the city of San Francisco, the State of California, or Democrats in general. 

Facts about State "high taxes."  

The wealthiest and most economically diverse states in the union that have high taxes and provide a lot of services and are mostly blue states that contribute more money in taxes to the Federal Government than they get back  from the Federal Government.

The poorest, least economically diverse states all have low taxes and provide few service, are virtually all Red States, and generally get more money back from the Federal Government than they contribute in taxes.

Facts about high taxes Fox News never talks about.  

For the Federal government the Republican low tax policies Fox news promotes have been in effect about 50 of the last 100 years.  During those years the top income tax rate on rich folks has been 40% or below.   During the years Republican low tax policies have dominated the National debt has grown faster than GDP - as a country our net wealth has gone backwards averaging a net loss of about -.5% of GDP per year.

The other half century when Democratic high tax polices dominated the top income tax rate averaged about 70% on the top income of the wealthiest taxpayers.  Those years of control by "tax and spend" Democrats saw no net increase in the National debt, and we averaged GDP growth of about 2.7% per year.  In other words we got 2.7% wealthier per year as a country.

The history of the last 100 years is pretty clear that high taxes on the wealthy make us a richer, stabler country.  Low taxes are a penny wise - pound foolish option that, while it makes the rich feel relatively richer, in fact makes even the rich poorer and the rest of us a lot poorer.  The the red states that buy into the ideologically driven representations on Fox News and elect low tax Republicans are undercutting this countries potential, and their own economic vitality.

1 comment:

lloyd said...

Excellent summary, Jan. Thanks for taking the time to help me and others understand this important issue. Lloyd