HOME  E-DEMOCRACY 98  E-DEBATE WEB MN-FORUM

Thomas Fiske      Response 14

Question 14: Assuming no overall tax increase, how should the tax burden be shifted to better reflect the needs of Minnesota? Explain one example.

The tax burden weighs heavily on workers and family farmers and
should be shifted onto the fat wallets of the wealthy.

The entire increase in personal income in the last ten years has
gone into the pockets of the rich. The capitalists and landlords
have succeeded in putting the entire burden of the economic crisis
onto the backs of working people, especially the blue collar workers
and the worst-off layers of the working-class and working farmers.

There is a maze of tax laws in the US. Many of them purport to
tax the profits of the corporations and the income of the rich.
However, they are larded with many generous loopholes that working
people rightfully resent. Working people know accurately that the
fantastic salaries of corporate lawyers is one reflection of the
advantages that tax law has for the wealthy.

I propose to eliminate all taxes on working people, and to
replace the maze of existing laws with a single law, which is a
steeply graduated progressive income tax on the rich. This would
shift the tax burden onto thosewho profit from the labor of workers
and family farmers.

The question which has been asked is a trick question. There is
not one
"Minnesota" which can benefit from a change in tax laws. There are
two "Minnesotas." There is the Minnesota of the capitalists and
landlords -- those who own the factories, mines, mills, banks,
transport and communications. And there is the Minnesota of the
workers and the family farmers -- those whose labor creates all the
wealth. The two different categories of Minnesotans have no interests
in common.