Taxes: The Root of Social Class in America

       It is no secret that our country is in a massive financial deficit, and just this week it was  reported that we are nearing our deficit cap, which I did not know I existed. I guess I assumed that the amount of money the US can borrow from other nations and spend without revenue was limitless, but that is not the case. As soon as we are in too deep (I believe the figure is $14,000,000,000,000 [14 trillion]), the rating agency Standard & Poor's will degrade our nation, as if it were a company, from a AAA credit rating to "bankrupt." The AAA rating refers to a party's financial ability to repay every dollar of its outstanding debts, including interest, claims Sergei Shelin in Russia's Gazeta.ru. And as our debt spills over our GDP, that rating and the respect associated with it will be lost.
       Any country can spend its income in countless ways: military, social welfare, public works, and much more. But there is only 1 (yes, one) way for a nation to reasonably receive that regular income: taxes. As Americans, we should all be appalled that our nation has increased our debt to this much in the last decade, considering President Bush inherited a surplus from Clinton. As Americans, we should also feel an inert responsibility to repay our debts, and as many conservatives would like to argue against, incorrectly, the only way to do so is by increasing taxes across the highest income brackets. Spending must be cut as well, but even if you cut all of last year's $13.2 trillion  budget which is absurd), we would still be short.

We simply have no money left

       Taxes are an interesting issue in American history, because while all acknowledge they must exist, there is always heated debate about who should pay how much. The revenue only comes from the American people, and as Americans it is our duty to work against the debt.
       When speaking of taxes, and who pays how much, the class system is often mentioned. The lower class pays virtually no taxes on their income, as they have very little income as it is. The upper class (as defined here by wealth, and the wealthiest 1%) contributes 32% of the tax revenue. Critics often cite statistics like these to confuse the voting public about raises in taxes, and justifying tax breaks for the wealthy. While taxes would for the bottom 98% of America would be immoral, as the people in this range are the ones struggling, and compose, based on wealth, the "middle" and "lower" classes, the big earners should feel a moral obligation to their fellow Americans to cough up more out of every paycheck.
       The most compelling statistic, retrieved from E.J. Dionne, Jr. of The Washington Post is thus: "In 1980, the wealthy paid an average of 34.5 percent of their incomes to taxes; by 2008, that figure had dropped to 23.3 percent." We all know an economic boom followed the twenty years after the former year, and we can only hope the twenty years following the latter year aren't as miserable as they appear to be.