Hightower Lowdown

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page is the unofficial mouthpiece for Corporate America. Its writers are constantly carping about how the rich are just damned near bent over double with the burden of having to support the government with their taxes.
Recently, however, they had an astonishing conversion: They came out for more taxes! Not on them and their ilk. On us—the working stiffs and poor folks.
You can’t make up stuff this good. The editors wailed from on high about “The Non-Paying Class,” declaring that us hoi polloi “pay little or no taxes” and need to be forced by Washington to pay more in order to relieve the burden of those at the top.
They singled out a poor, hypothetical lowest-tax-bracket schmoe who’s making $12,000 a year. This person, the editors complained, “pays a little less than 4% of income in taxes.” They dubbed such people “lucky duckies.”
Hello? Trying to eke out a living on 12 grand a year is the exact opposite of “lucky.” It’s poverty—and it ought not to be taxed at all.
When the Journal jokers talk about who pays the most taxes, they refer only to federal income taxes, leaving out the regressive burdens of our payroll taxes, state and local taxes, sales taxes, gasoline taxes, fees, and a host of other assessments. Add these in, and us slobs at the bottom pay the same rates or higher than the swells at the top.