“Pay Your Fair Share”

by Mark Fernwood

                                                              “Pay Your Fair Share”

A favorite slogan of the left is that the “rich should pay their Fair Share,” to which I must agree!  The top 1% of income earners currently account for 40% of all federal Income taxes.  The top 25% pay 87%. The bottom 50% account for only about 3%.  Many of those actually receive a welfare payment (exceeding their tax payment) called the “Earned Income Tax Credit.”  Obviously this is hardly a “fair share” allocation.  For the “rich” to pay a “fair share” a massive top tax rate reduction would be needed.  Naturally, that is not what the left intends.

Aside from the injustice and the Unamerican nature of redistribution, it destroys the incentive to be productive.  People become motivated to sacrifice, and to invest for the benefit of their future and that of their family, not for some nebulous “common good.”

The absence of personal incentive is foundational to understanding why socialism always fails. Further, substituting government regulation based management, for private, profit motivated ownership is a second reason for failure. 

Who pays the taxes?

https://www.ntu.org/foundation/tax-page/who-pays-income-taxes

Earned Income Tax Credit

https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/individuals/earned-income-tax-credit-eitc