Examining One Heart of the Divide
Got accused yesterday of veering off from my supposed theme of the week: art and judicial activism.
Guilty, with extenuating circumstances.
When I made that statement, it was already the middle of the week and I still had enough material for a couple posts. I should've put my head down and kept writing. Instead, I kept reading stuff that got me going in a different direction.
The latest... Minnesota candidate for Governor Becky Lourey was quoted as saying: "I'm for fair taxes ... based on the ability to pay. We've got to stop living in a plutocracy, government by and for the wealthy."
Had she added, "and paid for by the middle class," it would have been an even better soundbite that highlighted the issue of tax disparity. But the statement wouldn't be true, since the wealthy do pay the majority of tax dollars. The middle class pays a higher proportion of its income in various forms of taxation.
This would be a very good discussion for Minnesota and the nation to be having, because it goes to the heart of the divide. (Actually, the divide is more like a worm with multiple hearts, but you get the idea.)
It's a topic I've written about before, but if you want a quick overview from some experts, read the 11/20/05 Strib conversation between Growth & Justice's Joel Kramer and Lynn Edward Reed of the Minnesota Taxpayers Association. You'll have to find a newspaper, though. The Strib's redesigned online version is so buggy, slow and ill-conceived, even this registered reader gave up trying to find the cover piece of the print OpEx section. (There was a dumbed-down sidebar on tax rate differences from the print story, broken into two different copy blocks and presented as separate mini-stories, minus the graphic that illustrated the actual data. Sheesh.)
And there's still more to come on judge hating.
Guilty, with extenuating circumstances.
When I made that statement, it was already the middle of the week and I still had enough material for a couple posts. I should've put my head down and kept writing. Instead, I kept reading stuff that got me going in a different direction.
The latest... Minnesota candidate for Governor Becky Lourey was quoted as saying: "I'm for fair taxes ... based on the ability to pay. We've got to stop living in a plutocracy, government by and for the wealthy."
Had she added, "and paid for by the middle class," it would have been an even better soundbite that highlighted the issue of tax disparity. But the statement wouldn't be true, since the wealthy do pay the majority of tax dollars. The middle class pays a higher proportion of its income in various forms of taxation.
This would be a very good discussion for Minnesota and the nation to be having, because it goes to the heart of the divide. (Actually, the divide is more like a worm with multiple hearts, but you get the idea.)
It's a topic I've written about before, but if you want a quick overview from some experts, read the 11/20/05 Strib conversation between Growth & Justice's Joel Kramer and Lynn Edward Reed of the Minnesota Taxpayers Association. You'll have to find a newspaper, though. The Strib's redesigned online version is so buggy, slow and ill-conceived, even this registered reader gave up trying to find the cover piece of the print OpEx section. (There was a dumbed-down sidebar on tax rate differences from the print story, broken into two different copy blocks and presented as separate mini-stories, minus the graphic that illustrated the actual data. Sheesh.)
And there's still more to come on judge hating.
2 Comments:
The discussion mentioned above is now available on the Growth & Justice web site.
Darn those metaphors! To one reader who actually knows something about worm anatomy, my multiple worm-hearts figure of speech was confusing, because in worms, the heart really isn't the heart of anything.
Am I going to have to start editing my rants?
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