History's taxman.

• Author: Levene, Douglas
• Position: LETTERS - Letter to the editor

In the last issue's Editor's Note ["Playing Chicken with History," July/August 2011], Paul Glastris is correct to note that, historically, civilizations that exempt large sectors of the economy from taxation (e.g., the Buddhist temples in medieval China) suffer. However, he has failed to identify the part of the economy that's become exempt from paying their fair share of income taxes. It's not the affluent. Half of the taxpayers in the U.S. pay no income tax at all. Who pays income taxes? The top 10 percent of all personal income earners paid 70 percent of all personal income taxes. And don't give me that crap about payroll taxes. Most of the people who are exempt from income taxes will receive far more back from Social Security and Medicare than they will pay in payroll taxes.

In any event, you could raise taxes on the rich all you want and still not come close to paying for government on the scale that the author wants. Raising marginal tax rates to 40 percent on the two-earner professional families that make over $250,000 a year would raise maybe a tenth or a fifth of what's needed. The only way to pay for the...