Timothy Noah: Taxed Enough Already?

Timothy Noah's piece in The New Republic from last Friday highlights some interesting points about taxation in America. Many certainly complain taxes are too high, and most Americans want taxes on the wealthy to increase to help pay off our national debt, and to fund the much-needed government programs many in the poor and middle classes depend on (not too mention nearly every gain in wealth in the country over the last 30 years has gone to the top 1% of the population). But I think Noah's piece is important for a couple of reasons:

1) He rightly points to the fact that as a whole, Americans do not pay that much in taxes, and haven't since the mid-1950's. Thus it should not be argued that decreasing taxes will somehow spur economic growth and investment. If the rich were going to invest with the trillions of dollars they have, they'd've done it by now.

2) He makes the obvious correlation that ever since Reagan was in office, the percentage of taxes paid per family has dropped, and we have pretty much run deficits ever since that time.

Read the entire article here.