Free Screwed the Undeclared War Against the Middle Class by Thom Hartmann

get up in the morning and the lights come on because my government is regulating the local utility for both safety and reliability. (FDR had to
force
electric utilities to serve many communities—thus the Rural Electrification Administration.) I open the tap to brush my teeth, and the water is pure because my government has purified it and delivered it to me from miles away in a safe fashion. The toothpaste I use isn't poisonous because the government passed laws that make it possible for aggrieved consumers to sue if they're harmed. Its ingredients are listed because the government requires it.
    When I drive to work, the streets are paved by my government, and the streetlights work because my government planned them right and keeps them in good working order. The radio station where I broadcast from can do business because my government provides a stable currency and a framework of contract laws that allow a corporation to exist and function. The food I eat for lunch at a nearby restaurant is safe both because it was inspected atits source by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and because the local government checks our restaurants for sanitary conditions. I can eat without worrying that bandits are going to run into the restaurant and demand everybody's wallet because the police are on the job. And I can go about my day without worrying that we'll be bombed by invaders from another country because the State Department and the U.S. Army both negotiate and protect our nation. With a little bit of thought, you can add dozens of other things to this list—all provided with taxpayer dollars.
    Living in this society and using these services is like picking up and biting into the Hershey bar at the 7-Eleven: I've agreed to pay for them because I live here and I use them. The form of my agreement is called taxes. Therefore the money from my paycheck that goes to pay my taxes is
not
my money. It's the money I owe to cover the cost associated with the things I use each and every day. To suggest that it's "my" money is to spit in the face of our Founders—to suggest that somehow each of us is above and separate from the social contract we've all agreed to by living in this great nation.
    When the cons say, "It's your money," what they really mean is that they don't believe in the social contract. They don't believe in paying for the services we use every day or in taking care of the poor and the sick and the elderly who can't take care of themselves. They are anti-American, anti-democracy, anti-Christian (and anti-Jewish and anti–every other major religion) zealots. They are a danger to our democracy and our country.
    Progressive taxation has a long history. Jefferson advocated for progressive taxation in his letters to James Madison back in 1784 and 1785: "Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property," Jefferson wrote, "is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise." In short, Jefferson said, "Taxes should be proportioned to what may be annually spared by the individual."
    But the cons—who since the days when John Adams called working people "the rabble"—fought back. A true middle class represented a threat to America's aristocrats and pseudo-aristocrats because a middle class will always create a democracy. The cons would have to give up some of their power, and some of the higher end of their wealth might even be "redistributed"—horror of horrors—for schools, parks, libraries, and other things that support a healthy middle-class society (but not necessarily the rich, who live in a parallel, but separate, world).
    When today's cons make
tax
a dirty word, they are really saying they don't care if the middle class gets screwed. As president, Reagan cut the top tax rate for billionaires from 70 percent to 28 percent while effectively raising taxes on working people via the payroll tax; he added insult to injury by