OpEdNews - Diary: Raising taxes on the rich is the fair thing to do

The fact that the Republicans do a better job of framing the issues really disturbs me.

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The Republicans have done a good job of framing the issue of raising taxes on the wealthy as "redistributing wealth." They have convinced many Americans that this is somehow unfair. The term "redistributing wealth" is both pejorative and false. Having the rich pay more in taxes is based on fairness in that the wealthy have large corporate holdings and use the largest percentage per capita of our nation's public goods that are paid by our taxes such as roads and ports for shipping goods, courts for settling corporate legal issues, police protection for their multiple properties and the military for protecting shipping lanes on the high seas and their property overseas. The richest 1% and their corporations create industrial waste which needs to be cleaned. They dump huge amounts of trash in our landfills and they pollute our air much more so than the average citizen in the bottom 99%, yet they are not paying their fair share to support the system. When people hear the term "redistributing wealth," they mistakenly believe that this means that their tax dollars are being transferred to the poor. When we ask that the rich pay more in taxes, this is not about "redistributing wealth." It is simply making sure that people pay their fair share in taxes for the cost of what they use. The rich use more of America's vast infrastructure that was built by our tax dollars and they should pay more for it. The Republican refusal to consider raising taxes on the rich as part of the deficit reduction plan is not just bad public policy. It is fundamentally unfair to 99% of the American taxpayers who are currently subsidizing the use of our infrastructure by the wealthy.