If we examine the real tax

burden of our family before federal taxes, we see $1054 Social Security,

$360 medicare, $624 state income tax, assume $800 personal property and

real estate tax. If we assume they save $100 a month and spend the rest

on necessities, at 5 percent, the family would spend $40 a month on sales

taxes or $540 a year, bringing their tax total to $3912 for the year.

That is 14.8 percent of the families' AGI before any federal tax. I guarantee

there is no one in the upper (top 25 percent) who even approaches that

number.

Now here is my problem with

your problem, Cal: Government is not some sort of business where you're

provided direct equity in all things. You can't go to the window and ask

for your road building dollars back.

Men have formed and continue

to form societies and governments out of necessity. Those governments

can take many different forms and they don't have to be, and traditionally

have not, comprised anything like our form of democratic republicanism,

which has in turn generated all this wealth.

It's nice and simple to say,

let every man be taxed the same amount (a head or poll tax), or at the

same rate (flat tax). The reality is that many very good, hard-working

people live right on the edge through no fault of their own, and in the

name of "fairness," we can help push them right over that edge.

What we'll probably find is

you can't get blood out of a stone, but you can sure as hell crack the

stone trying.

In the end, it all boils down

to how we want this society to look and function, not some simpleminded

hue to an ethereal, but completely impractical philosophy of tax equity.

If this is just a business, why do we get emotional at the playing of

the national anthem? Why don't we have equal representation of the bottom

50 percent in the national government? Are there sufficient numbers of

the wealthiest 1 percent in combat rifle platoons headed for Iraq right

now?

As to the latter two questions,

probably not. So they're going to do most of the dying but had no real

say in the policy. Does that seem fair to you, Cal?

The only reason the wealthy

have any money, or power, or importance, is because they are buoyed on

the shoulders of the people they get to create and maintain their wealth.

We shouldn't be seeking any great levelers.

Winston Churchill said: "The

inherent vice of Capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings. The inherent

virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries." When we reach

the current stage where 1 percent controls 20 percent of the wealth, they

can expect to pay some disproportionate taxes.

In "The American Crisis,"

Thomas Paine wrote: "Yet it is folly to argue against determined

hardness; eloquence may strike the ear, and the language of sorrow draw

forth the tear of compassion, but nothing can reach the heart that is

steeled with prejudice." I often see "conservative" writers

lambasting "liberals" for painting them as heartless bastards

which they claim not to be.

Whether or not that characterization

stands, you're not getting a whole lot more out of the bottom 50 percent.

Using Cal's numbers, I can say the rich continue to get richer despite

their crushing burden. Good thing the shrub wants to ease their pain just

a little more!

Timothy J. Parker

Peachtree City