As the headline says, you will note that whenever a political figure or a leftist claims that "paying taxes is patriotic," you will note that they are about to tell you that you should pay more. This is a fundamental law of the universe, to be known henceforth as Clark's Law of Taxational Patriotism: "When taxation is levied, the claim that paying taxes is an act of patriotism shall invariably be followed by a demand for a higher taxes."
This brings us to a Maryland state delegate, Gabriel Acevero, who is making just this claim: “The most patriotic thing you can do is not the Pledge of Allegiance... but paying your fair share in taxes.”
Mr. (Yes, I'm presuming his gender; the beard is kind of a giveaway) Acevero claims:
It's the most patriotic thing that anyone can do, is to pay your taxes. And we can debate how we want to raise those taxes, whether we should raise those taxes, who we are raising them on, but the most patriotic thing you can do is not the Pledge of Allegiance, is not singing the Star-Spangled Banner, but paying your fair share in taxes.
Aside from the inevitable application of that fundamental law noted above, note the traditional leftist shibboleth: "...paying your fair share in taxes," meaning that you should be paying more. Even if the top 10 percent of the taxpaying citizens in the country are paying 90 percent of the taxes, the left will still call on them to pay more, to pay "their fair share."
So, you know what this guy's real point is.
Here's the thing the left never gets about taxes. Well, there are a lot of things the left doesn't get about taxes, but here's a big one: You can increase revenues by lowering marginal tax rates.
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What the left always derides as "tax cuts" are cuts in the marginal rate, the marginal rate being the percentage you pay on your next dollar of income. There's this thing called the Laffer Curve, conceived by Reagan advisor Art Laffer. A very simplified explanation of the Laffer Curve would work like this: Posit a system of taxation with only one marginal rate, to be paid by every citizen on every dollar of income. Now, if that rate were zero, then the government's tax receipts would likewise be zero. But if that rate was 100 percent, then the government's tax receipts would also be zero, or so close as would make no difference. Somewhere in between is a tax rate that is ideal for that economy at that time, a rate which would maximize government income while not being too onerous on the taxpayers. And, here's another thing: That level moves with changing economic systems, with changing outside influences (trade, wars, etc.), and so on.
The left seems to have this idea that the tax system is a dial they can turn up, that an increase in marginal rates will always return an increase in receipts, and that just isn't so.
The other thing the left doesn't get about taxes is that paying them isn't some noble, patriotic gesture. If it were, we wouldn't have an army of people on the public payroll making sure those taxes are paid. No, taxes are monies confiscated from the people by force of law, and if you doubt that, try not paying your taxes and see how long it takes for the government to send men with guns out looking for you. And if the left really believed that paying taxes was a noble, patriotic gesture, they'd pay more voluntarily. They never do, so there you are.
Taxation is, at best, a necessary evil. There are certain distributed interests, ranging from everything to the military to road maintenance, that the government at various levels is best suited to do. We pay them grudgingly, hoping that what we get in return is worth the price.
And, yes, the left, whenever anyone to the right of Pol Pot objects to yet another tax rate hike, will point to our catastrophic public debt, now approaching $37 trillion. That's the only time the left cares about the debt. While this is an existential crisis, we can't tax our way out of it. We may - maybe - still be able to grow our way out of it, and hopefully, we can make that happen, but not if we're being taxed to death. The other options - hyperinflation or repudiation - would be disastrous.
As Mr. Laffer himself said:
Government spending is taxation. When you look at this, I've never heard of a poor person spending himself into prosperity; let alone I've never heard of a poor person taxing himself into prosperity.
And no country ever taxed itself into prosperity. Remember that next time you're confronted by some whining leftie claiming that paying taxes is patriotic.
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