While reading Charles Krauthammer’s Friday column, I felt the earth shake under my feet, to borrow a lyric from a popular song. Imagine him stating in writing that he supports Social Security, an increase in taxes, and the idea that carbon dioxide is a pollutant! These statements almost allowed me to overlook his fuzzy math: $12 more in gas tax per week would be balanced by $12 less in FICA taxes per week to therefore increase unemployment and Social Security checks by $12. This does not compute. Dear Charles is not completely reformed. He still believes that those on Social Security are deterred from work by their benefits.
As much as I dislike reading Krauthammer, I feel it is necessary in order to understand his point of view, and those of people who follow his line of reasoning. When he describes the gas tax as regressive because it “hits the middle and working classes far more than the rich,” then why does he detest the fairer tax, which is a graduated income tax? He wishes to curb driving by making it more expensive. Yet he gives no consideration to the people who have to find alternative forms transportation if they cannot afford to drive. They work for wages and depend upon infrastructures with poor or no public transportation.
Charles distorts reality. All of us, rich, middle class and poor, depend upon a social net. The rich need clean air, water, and functional roads, bridges and tunnels, just as the middle class and poor do. So, even according to his own writing, a fairer way to provide for these needs would be an increase in the marginal income tax rate (the rate paid on earnings over $450,000 per married couple) than in the regressive gas tax.
Michael Molly
Edmonds
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