“A 5 letter word for happiness: MONEY.” - Mr. Krabs
I recall receiving my first paycheck. I worked assembling
eye-wear in a warehouse, so my pay wasn’t stellar. Regardless, it was a first
job and I was looking forward to any amount of money. I had worked about 20
hours and couldn’t wait to cash those $200. I remember receiving the check and
looking down at the amount.
$170 or so. Because of taxes.
It wasn’t that far
off from what I expected, only $30. However, I couldn’t help but feel like the government
had stolen three hours of my life. Americans hate taxes. Especially the rich.
Noam Chomsky makes the claim that the reduction of taxes on
the rich is unfair for the rest of Americans. He states, “The tax system has
been redesigned so that the taxes that are paid by the very wealthy are reduced
and, correspondingly, the tax burden on the rest of the population’s increased”
(55). To back up his claim, Chomsky utilizes several pieces of evidence.
Chomsky begins by providing historical context. He mentions
taxes were higher on the rich during the 50’s and 60’s, which he states were a
time of strong growth in the US economy (54). He makes the statement that taxes
on corporations, taxes on the wealthy, and taxes on dividends were drastically
higher. To support this sub-claim, he provides two graphs displaying tax rates
over time from the 1950’s to 2010. Chomsky uses graphs rather than including
the statistics in his writing to allow to a visual display of the evidence. By
viewing it visually, it’s easy to see the downward trend of taxes on the
highest earners and the lack of change of tax rates on the lowest earners. He
provides a second graph showing the percent of tax revenue which was capital
gains from 1970 to 2010. This included infographic shows that with the decrease
in taxes on the rich, the government had to shift where it received its
funding, which supports Chomsky’s claim that a greater burden has been placed
on middle and lower-class Americans.
Chomsky mentions there are current efforts to keep taxes on
wages and on consumption, instead of dividends. He provides another graph, a
bar graph, to display why this is unfair. The poorer American’s make nearly no
money off dividends, but the wealthiest 0.01% of Americans make over half of
their income off dividends. This means most of the wealthy’s income isn’t even
taxed. The part which does get taxed, wages, only comprises less than 20% of
their income, while wages are 80% of the bottom 80% of Americans incomes.
Chomsky makes use of a prolepsis before further addressing his
viewpoint. He describes the opposing viewpoint, that decreasing taxes on the
rich lead to greater investments in the economy which yields more jobs and
quality of life for all. He then counters this argument by pointing to the lack
of evidence to support it and suggesting better ways money could be spent (56).
Noam Chomsky re-uses the phrase “vile maxim” throughout Requiem for the American Dream,
especially when he is trying to drive a point home. He uses “vile maxim” after
discussing the wealth of Goldman Sachs and their bailout to further communicate
just how easy it is for corporations in America to harm the average American
for the corporation’s benefit (56).
Noam Chomsky uses mostly statistics as evidence. With these statistics,
he proves life has gotten easier for the rich, which means life is getting
harder for the average American.
Now that I think about it Mr krabs is total selfish master of mankind! anyway, the taxes on the wealthy relate to what I observed. The wealthy hate paying taxes for obvious reasons everyone hates , however the rich don't like their taxes being used to help the less fortunate.Although taxes, are very annoying and seem unfair, many times they are used for great purposes such as public education and health.The main problem in both taxes and the vile maxim is greed. The rich are full of greed, they don't want to get taxed and at any cost they will prevent helping their fellow neighbor.I do agree when Chomsky refutes that lowering taxes for rich would increase the quality of our lives. The issue is not the taxes, but the gree and love of money that these men have. I personally believe taxing should be proportional, the more money you make the more taxes you must give, hence the lower you make the less you get taken away.
ReplyDeleteYour analysis of Chomsky's claim about taxes is both entertaining and saddening. I too know the sinking feeling of just being robbed after looking at my first paycheck. I still hate seeing how much of my hard work goes to social security and other taxes. The evidence that you point out in Chomsky's argument is not surprising. In fact, it feels as if it is almost common knowledge that middle and lower class Americans are stuck paying taxes that the wealthy refuse to responsibly acknowledge. Even if it is common knowledge though, it is still appalling to think about how much of the burden would be lifted off of the majority's shoulders of the wealthy paid their fair share of taxes. You're right, Chomsky uses statistics to prove that taxes on wages are overwhelming unfair, and this makes me wonder, just how much money is enough for the wealthy? At what point will they stop and think, "I should probably start paying more taxes?"
ReplyDeleteI agree with your point on how the statistics, graphs, and info graphs causes his audience to perceive his claims as true because as the saying goes, "numbers don't lie." People often associate numbers with data from which an experiment or research project was conducted, thus making the information accurate. In addition, I feel as though people are more able to understand information visually rather than simply reading data or technical language. Even now as I was reading your blog, I was reading faster than I could process what the data you were writing about said, however when I opened up to the graphs in the textbook it was a lot easier to understand. Maybe professor Flewelling would let us use relevant pictures, graphs, or infographics in our essays to help get our point across lol.
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