‘Soaking the poor’ by any other name

How do you give a tax break to the wealthiest Americans without running up the national debt? Easy: Soak the poor.

But that sounds so crass and unfeeling. So instead of “soak the poor,” let’s call it “broadening the base.” Squeeze some more taxes out of those at the bottom.

Of course, they can barely eke out a living, but if we squeeze a little from each one, it will make a big difference because there are so many of them.

After all, the richest 1 percent pay a disproportionate amount of our taxes. Don’t they deserve a break? And if we let the wealthy get richer, they will use their money to create more jobs and raise the wages of the poor. Right? You know, trickle down.

The fact is that the richest 1 percent possess 40 percent of the wealth. Why shouldn’t they pay the most taxes?

And for years, the wealth of the richest Americans has grown rapidly while the wealth of those at the bottom remained stagnate. If trickle-down worked, the wealthy would already have created more jobs and raised wages. Why haven’t they?