California currently faces an issue that is applicable to the United States as a whole: the ceaseless issue of taxes. Governor Brown in California proposed a bill that will raise state taxes on those making over $300,000 a year by up to 30%. Under this bill, the top 1% of Californians by income would be contributing 50% of the state tax. Brown argues that without this bill passed, California will have to resort to cutting its school year by three weeks just to make ends meet. Keep in mind that California already has the highest state taxes in the nation largely in an effort to rebalance its $16 billion deficit. In terms of state tax, it seems positively ridiculous that the rich are being burdened to finance systems that benefit the poor. State taxes go towards systems such as public education, public healthcare, and social welfare that benefit the poor and middle class much more than they benefit the rich. This is why many states follow a flat tax system.
This same theory can be applied to the United States as a whole. Many stanch conservatives argue that the government should not redistribute income. I disagree, though. I believe that all Americans have a duty to contribute economically to the success of the nation at large and that the wealthy, since they are more able to do so, should be more responsible for contributing financially to the social institutions that benefit society as a whole. After all, no country has been able to retain post-Industrial economic development without vast social welfare systems. The fact of the matter is that the private sector simply does not produce better human capital for the masses through means such as research and education.
However, even under a flat tax system, the wealthy would be taxed much more heavily than the middle class and the poor. Though, their proportional responsibility for taxes would be less than it currently is under the United Staets’ progressive tax system. A successful flat tax would only be applicable for individuals with incomes above a certain threshold. For the purposes of this article, let us assume that a successful federal income flat tax could tax individuals on 25% of their income above $25,000 per year. Under such a tax plan, the middle class would still pay far less than the wealthy as they would have far less of their income eligible for taxation as opposed to the wealthy. Yet, such a system would increase the middle class’s responsibility for the systems that they, not the rich, depend on such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. The United States prides itself as a nation built on self-reliance. Though some, most notably the working poor, may need government assistance and be unable to fund such systems, the majority of the United States, including the middle class must be held responsible economically for the government systems that they depend on.