Once the President’s Social Security privatization scheme has its feeding tube unplugged, the next big line item on the agenda will be tax “reform”. With all the talk you’ll be hearing about how inefficient the IRS is, how complicated the tax code is, or whiny pleas for “fairness”, there should be no mistake about the real agenda. As the GOP has demonstrated with pretty much every tax cut they’ve ever sponsored, the goal is to screw the poor, reward the rich, and sell the American public on the idea of a flat tax. As the Christian Science Monitor points out, however, the tax code is almost flat now. (via Josh Marshall)

Ever since the introduction of the modern income tax in 1913, US policy has been guided by the notion that the rich should pay a larger of their income in federal taxes, since they arguably owe something extra to a government that protects their greater wealth, and to a society that has helped them prosper.

But a debate has long waged over just where to draw the line, with populists pushing to “soak the rich” and conservatives arguing that a too-progressive tax structure creates a disincentive for the creation of jobs and wealth that benefit the whole nation.

Chalk up President Bush as not just a tax cutter but also a tax flattener. Under Mr. Bush and a Republican Congress, big tax cuts since 2001 have given major tax reductions to those wealthy individuals presumed, up to now, to be able to afford paying a bigger chunk of their income in taxes. By one measure of the federal, state, and local tax burden, just 3.4 percentage points separate the effective tax rate paid by the top 1 percent of earners from the other 99 percent of American households.

But the CSM article only hints at the fact that it hasn’t always been this way. Indeed, during the good ol’ days that conservatives are so eager to return us to, the gap between the top 1% and the rest of us was a hell of a lot larger than today’s 3.4%. Here’s a handy chart that shows just how much tax rates have changed from the late 40’s through the late 80’s (Source):



So when the President starts talking about taxes, let’s not forget that he and his rich friends have been getting the taxes cut for the past 50 years. It’s our turn now.