A Legitimate point

McCain has started attacking Obama’s tax plans.  This is a area that the Republicans have, hitherto, failed to make much political ground.  The American people resent taxes almost more than any other country being more transparent and less amenable to efficient tax planning than most other jurisdictions.  As a result, it has been surprising that the Republicans have not made more of an issue with Obama’s repeated assertion that those earning more should pay more to the government.

The main problem with this is that they already do.  The top 5% of taxpayers already pay just under 60% of the tax revenue from federal income tax.  At what point does increasing tax on these people, as Obama advocates, kill the goose that is laying the golden eggs?  Or in economic terms when does this decrease economic efficiency and activity?  McCain has a legitimate point when he states that America was not built on spreading the wealth but on creating it.

In these troubled times this is a hard message to get across.  The American people know that this is the case intuitively.  They need McCain and the Republican party to articulate this as a rebuttal to the Obama and the Democratic party’s contention that because a segment of people can ‘afford’ something that is the right thing to do.  Such economic populism might get a party elected but it also destroys the great turbine of growth that is the American economy.