How did this socialist germ, the idea that wealthier people should pay higher taxes, creep into the American bloodstream? Through John McCain's hero, Theodore Roosevelt. He championed the idea that the rich should not only pay more money but a higher rate, arguing explicitly that it contradicted the spirit of socialism.
In “Wealth of Nations,” Adam Smith wrote: “The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.”
The U.S. financial crisis is a human rights issue Global Research
The U.S. government has been complicit in the emergence of the financial crisis. It deregulated the financial sector, failing to provide adequate protection for Americans against violations of their human rights by financial institutions. It failed to provide sprotection for Americans needing safe assets to achieve an adequate standard of living in their retirement, and good-quality affordable mortgages to purchase housing. The U.S. government allowed the financial sector to become dominated by speculation, creating an unstable house of cards that was bound to collapse. Financial institutions have now lost all confidence and trust in one another, and are failing to provide the credit required for businesses to produce and workers to be paid and houses to be bought and sold. Americans have been left unprotected against the loss of their businesses, homes and jobs; against the falling value of their savings, and homes; against the falling value of revenue from property taxes, leading directly to a decrease in the availability of resources for public education.
'Spreading the wealth' is nothing new to U.S.
But is it really socialism to talk of “spreading the wealth”?
Actually, it has been part of the American economic system since its founding.
In a letter to James Madison in 1785, for instance, Thomas Jefferson suggested that taxes could be used to reduce “the enormous inequality” between rich and poor. He wrote that one way of “silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.”
Madison later spoke in favor of using laws to “reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity (meaning the middle) and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort.”
God forbid you ever had to walk a mile in their shoes,
Cause then you really might know what it's like to sing the blues.
The reality is increasing taxes on the upper tier promotes economic growth, because funds are reinvested rather than cashed out.