Taxes, Taxes, and Taxes

Over on HKB (facebook, "The Hello Kitty of Bloggin'™") again, Morgan pointed out a link to a Think Progress article where they libs there think they've got their "Gotcha".

They don't.

There are several ways to talk about taxes.

There is the dollar amount of taxes one pays.  There is the rate of tax one  pays.   There is the total amount of tax that the government collects.  And there is the percentage of the tax burden one pays.

Democrats and our self-described "Progressives" like to shuffle these around as if they are interchangable to make things sound like they want them to sound.

From the context in the debate, it is clear that Romney meant that he will not reduce the third measure on "the rich".  In other words, when he reduces tax rates for everyone, the rich will still be shouldering about the same percentage of the resulting tax burden.  Which, by the way, is the vast majority of the tax burden anyway.

And for you snarkers out there who want to talk about sales tax and property tax, etc... we're talking about the Presidency, the Federal Government, hence, we're talking about Federal taxes here.   Even payroll taxes are paid by the employer, typically.  Yes, even the employee's portion.  All of the money comes from the employer.  And the employee never sees the portion he "pays".  The employer sends *all* of it to the Federal Government.  It only "belonged" to the employee in a ledger.  It was never in his hands.

These are not contradictory statements, but of course the Dems want you to think they are.

Romney is absolutely right that the only way out of the hole we are in is by growing the tax base ... by growing the economy.  There is a point where more money taxed at a lower rate yields more money taken in in taxes.  And an overtaxed economy is restricted from growing.  Of course, Democrats don't want anybody thinking that way, but even they know it's true (see Obama in the 2008 debates -- he acknowledged this but said it didn't matter in his vision of "fairness").  But they're too busy casting themselves in the role of Robin Hood to admit it in public.

So the Dems stick with the class warfare and fan the flames of discontent with vague (and sometimes not-so-vague) Marxist rhetoric to help divide the country into little groups of people to pander to with other peoples' money to buy votes and gain power.

That's pretty much it.