It's day late, but here's part 2 of the 10 part series about our journey towards Socialism/Communism.
Karl Marx outlined 10 demands that must be met for a society to be considered Socialist. Today we'll cover number 2:
"A heavy progressive or graduated income tax."
Every time you are told that the rich are not paying "their fair share", that is an argument for the progressive income tax. Another key word is "redistribute".
A lot of people don't know that the federal government was not even allowed to collect taxes on income before 1913. When the 16th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, the top marginal tax rate (the rate on the wealthiest tax bracket) was 7%. In 1944, the top marginal rate was at its highest at 94%.
These numbers can be very deceiving and confusing. Almost anyone can get out of them what they want. One truth holds firm, however, and that is the fact that our income tax system has always been "progressive". The closest we have ever been to a non-progressive (flat) tax system was in 1988 when we only had two income tax brackets. The lower tax bracket paid 15% and the higher tax bracket paid 28%.
A progressive income tax was important enough to Marx and Engels to warrant its own mention in the list of demands and it makes sense to have it in there. Obviously you can't have complete "economic equality" (or whatever the trendy phrase is today to denote "Socialism") without a heavy progressive income tax. The disturbing fact of the matter is that this is the one mantra of the Socialist movement that seems completely acceptable to a very large number of people and everyone just seems fine with it.
So let's start keeping score. Each of the "demands" will be scored on a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being total Capitalist and 10 being total Communist.
Week 1: Abolition of private property rights -- 5.5 out of 10
Week 2: Heavy progressive income tax -- 7 out of 10
So, how do the progressives in Washington feel about wealth "redistribution"? See for yourself:
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