Robert Schooley sent me a link to this article by Michael Hiltzik, which is kind of a follow-up to the piece here the other day about rich folks paying little or no taxes. It's about how the now-divorced couple that owns the L.A. Dodgers made $108 million over a recent five-year period and paid zero state and federal taxes.
This was something that drove my late father to distraction. He worked for the Internal Revenue Service and hated his job for many, many reasons. One was just seeing how unfair was the spreading-around of the tax burden. He would come home from work some days, shaking his head over the inequity…how some poor guy living off minimum wage and struggling to feed his family would be hit with a huge tax bill while some zillionaire got away without paying a nickel. Too often, it was like famed hotel magnate Leona Helmsley said: "We [the rich] don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes."
I understand not wanting to pay taxes. Despite the way Conservatives sometimes caricature Liberals, no one likes the idea of taxes, and if I had enough loot to own the Dodgers, I'd tell my accountants to use every legal means to lower my tax bills. What I don't get is why low-income folks who especially resent their tax burden cheer on the rich folks' avoidance and don't demand the laws be adjusted to spread the burden more fairly. I always think of that line in the play 1776 where John Dickinson explains to John Hancock that "most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor." Since the day in which that show was set, it's kind of evolved into "most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming super-rich than face the reality of being poor."