In the United States, the question of taxation was a key underlying concept of the move for independence from the British overlords, and the Revolutionary War that eventually led to independence. This is part of the political consciousness of the American public. For the past more-than-thirty years, however, the right wing in the U.S. has been successful in dictating a particular form and definition of taxation, as well as its allocation. Taxation in the United States today is a well-established (and well-concealed) mechanism of transferring wealth from the majority to a minority, in effect instituting a system of social extraction of surplus value from the population as a whole. But exactly because taxation has become such a means of social surplus extraction, the left can attack and critique the current system and turn the discursive tables on this issue.
The debate regarding taxation has historically been limited to who pays the taxes, and by what percentage. The progressive taxation gives the poor a relative break (yet there is always the sales tax to make sure that everybody pays up), and raises the rates as the incomes rise. The other way around would be regressive taxation, which has been very much in force, and increasingly so as we go, since the offensive of the Thatcher & Reagan years began in full by 1980. The question of taxation has also always been cast as a purely ‘economic’ issue, a mere question of allocation/distribution of the tax revenues, even though those very decisions over allocation are clearly political decisions dictated by the power balance among different political classes in the society. full: http://www.thenorthstar.info/?p=12335 _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
