Income tax graduated

On Sept. 3, Chip Magnuson posed the question, “What public school did you attend?” I would ask him – what civics class did you fail? The reason people (70 percent of Americans) are asking for “the rich” to pay more is based on the concepts of the graduated income tax.

Maybe an extreme example will help. We’re not talking about the billionaires here, but those making considerably less. Let’s examine a person making $500,000 per year and a person making $100,000 per year. Let’s be ridiculous and tax the former 50 percent of his earnings and the latter nothing. One nets $250,000 and the other $100,000. Who is still better off? And that’s the concept of the graduated income tax. The rich pay more because they have more.

We’re not talking about the Eisenhower days of a 90 percent top tax bracket for the very rich. The repeal of the Bush tax cuts would raise the top rate for the “rich” from 35 percent to 39 percent. It’s doubtful if many of them would go broke paying that.

It’s often said that the rich shouldn’t be penalized for making money – well, neither should the poor.

And where are those jobs that tax cuts were to generate? China maybe?

Jeff Brown

Spokane Valley