Fixing the Deficit

Robert Reich on the politics of the budget debate:

In my view, even the President doesn’t go nearly far enough in the direction most Americans would approve. All he wants to do, essentially, is end the Bush tax windfalls for the wealthy – which were designed to be ended in 2010 in any event – and close a few loopholes.
But why shouldn’t we go back to the tax rates we had thirty years ago, which required the rich to pay much higher shares of their incomes? One of the great scandals of our age is how concentrated income and wealth have become. The top 1 percent now gets twice the share of national income it took home thirty years ago.
If the super rich paid taxes at the same rates they did three decades ago, they’d contribute $350 billion more per year than they are now – amounting to trillions more over the next decade. That’s enough to ensure every young American is healthy and well-educated and that the nation’s infrastructure is up to world-class standards.

Exactly.  Somehow, Republicans have teamed with business to whittle away the middle class, and yet they are still able to convince most of that same middle class that their decreasing standard-of-living is caused by government taxation.  This is even though taxes are at historical lows.  I don't get it.  But then again, I never figured that that Nigerian bank executive would deposit millions of dollars in my bank account if only I gave him my account number.