Do Forty-Six Percent of Americans Really Pay No Taxes? And also Is 'Inequality' and 'Financial Repression' a Cancer Growing on the Soul of Capitalism?

Abstract

For decades I considered myself a conservative Republican; in the early sixties Barry Goldwater was the first politician who really caught my eye. And having donned a conservative Republican’s hat, I’m sure I’d have been appalled to hear that half of our citizens paid no income tax!

Now fast forward to the nineties. As Y2K approached I began to realize that I was slowly evolving into a moderate independent. But wearing a new moderate independent’s hat, and also gazing out reality’s window at economic conditions I knew existed within my own family, I became, well,...curious.

I started to wonder. Considering that low-to-moderate-income families paid little if any income tax, why then were these families struggling so in the early 21st Century just to make ends meet? Especially since I knew that making ends meet had not been such a hard struggle in the mid-20th Century for responsible low-to-moderate-income families. I was there, and that defined my family!

Keywords: Taxes; Inequality; Financial Repression; Capitalism