Thoughts on the new Clark "Families First" tax reform plan

Here's the speech he gave. Here's the policy paper.

Three things I love about the plan

1. The name. It's always driven me bonkers that the Republican leadership has trumpeted familiy values while doing nothing at all to help actual families. So I loved the part in Clark's speech where he said "The Republicans are always talking about family values. It's time in America that we started valuing families. It's time we put America's families first again."


2. Eliminating the need for most families to file a tax form at all. Is there a person in the world who is not an accountant for whom the very thought of tax forms does not make their skin crawl? People who have to fill out the forms should be people who can afford to hire accountants to do it for them. Just imagine the additional time in April that families will have together when parents no longer spend evenings anxiously adding line 62a to line 58b and writing the results on line 85e.


3. Increasing the tax rate on income over $1 million/year, and using that money to pay for tax credits for non-wealthy working families.

Anyway, the plan rocks. Now here's my not-very-rigorous and probably offensive explanation about why our tax code should be mildly progressive:

Many people think there is something inherently unfair about the government taking a greater percentage of rich peoples' income than of poor peoples' income. Many of the people who believe this are not themselves rich, but are convinced that any second now, they will be, at which time they won't want to pay a larger percent than those losers who didn't become rich like they did.

You know what? Those people are right. There is something inherently unfair about rich people having to pay a greater percentage than poor people. Just as there is something inherently unfair about being born rich or poor to begin with. But that unfairness is different, you might protest. It's natural, whereas a progressive tax code is government-imposed, and the government has a responsibility to be fair. True enough. But that's not the only responsibility the government has. The government also has a responsibility to perpetuate the conditions that make democracy possible, and massive and increasing financial inequality ain't good for democracy. Wealthier citizens must contribute more than their 'fair share' so that future rioting masses won't snatch more than their 'fair share' from the cold dead fingers of the wealthier citizens' inheritors.

Oh, but unfair taxes stifle peoples' initiative, you say? I don't know. If you make over a million dollars a year, you probably have more ambition than is good for you, and you'll probably keep working your ass off no matter how much additional money you make from it. In fact, you might want to consider chilling out a little, having a little bit less ambition, maybe checking in with your kids to see what they're snorting these days.

Final, tangential point of this post: Americans have to work too hard, for too many hours. This is not beneficial to families. Families thrive when they have time to spend together. Not quality time, just time. Dinner time. Vacation time. Holiday time. Weekend time. Postpartum time. Americans have less vacation time than the residents of most other industrialized nations. Want to strengthen families? Give everyone the month of August off. Hey, if President Bush doesn't have anything important to do during August, all that crap the rest of us do at work can wait too, right?