Forty years ago, a conservative organization began promoting a written pledge from legislators and candidates for office committing them to oppose any effort to increase income taxes on individuals and businesses. Since then, the national debt has risen from $1.8 trillion to over $36 trillion. The commitment to no new taxes has been not only ineffective but foolhardy and detrimental to the nation.

A recent jeremiad in The Wall Street Journal complained that the top 1 percent are being treated unfairly because the average federal tax rate on their adjusted gross income in 2022 was 26.1 percent whereas those at the bottom only paid 3.7 percent.

There is another way of considering fairness. American prosperity depends on strong families. It is more important for the government to safeguard the family than it is to promote GDP growth, power protection overseas, or social justice at home. Families patriotically contribute to the national good by procreating and educating future citizens.  

The proper metric for fairness is disposable income after taxes. Every family needs income for food, shelter, and a bit on the side for other things. Let’s not keep this to just the basics. Let’s assume the family shops for food at an upscale grocery store, lives in a safe neighborhood, avoids the toxic effects of many public school systems, and takes a family vacation from time to time.

The bottom 85 percent, 138.5 million taxpayers making $100,000 or less, simply cannot afford such a middle-class lifestyle. Both parents must work and leave their children in the care of strangers. After paying their taxes, they cannot even buy the food they prefer or treats for their children. Reports are that 66 percent of Americans have only two months of savings while inflation erodes their little disposable income.. Their contributions to the less fortunate are to family members and those in their close community. They simply do not have the wherewithal to contribute to unknown unfortunates designated by the federal government. Married spouses filing jointly with one or more children earning less than, say, $250,000 should pay no federal income taxes whatsoever.

Disposable income of the top 1 percent far exceeds their needs. After satisfying their distribution to themselves, their loved ones, and the accoutrements of their lifestyles, those with a surplus have the capacity to direct some of that to the welfare state.

In other words, the top 1 percent are the only ones with the wherewithal to pay taxes for these extravagant programs. Fairness here is not the spirit of AOC’s infamous dress, seeking to equalize wealth along with equalizing every other outcome. It is one of priorities.

Consider the federal budget as primarily three buckets—welfare, regulation, and defense—and understand that a large portion of these expenditures are extra-Constitutional. Fairness means dedicating the expenses of the welfare state to those who can afford to pay for it while the remaining buckets are funded by everyone’s income tax.

Fairness is thus giving the privilege of solving the social problems such as unemployment, homelessness, nutrition programs for children, medical care for the less fortunate, etc. to those who have the financial and intellectual resources to either pay for them or resolve them.

Fairness could start with the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) taxes to fund Social Security, which are not collecting enough to fund Social Security benefits. With the demographic crisis ahead of us, this will only get worse. It may be possible to uncover inefficiencies and trim some benefits, but the substantive change would be to have everyone pay what they can afford. Currently everyone pays 6.2 percent of his or her gross salary until a cutoff of $168,600 with the employer paying an additional 6.2 percent. That means that Susie Worker earning $168,600 pays $10,453.20 and a celebrity newscaster earning $10 million pays $10,453.20 or 0.1 percent, hardly anything. A fair perspective: drop the cutoff entirely.

The same logic could be brought to funding the rest of the welfare state. The revenue currently produced by the Medicare tax is insignificant compared to the expenditures, resulting in a deficit of over $1.2 trillion. Income Security Programs for unemployment, family support, foster care, and nutrition account for an additional $449 billion.

Tax revenue should be collected by setting a payroll tax rate over a certain payroll level to cover all the expenditures for Medicare, Medicaid, and nutrition programs without cutting any of these services. The higher tax may not be so burdensome as it seems, if simultaneous reductions in the regulatory and defense buckets were to lower income taxes across the board.

Shifting the burden of paying for the welfare state to those who have the resources to solve the problems is a fair orientation of interests. The sooner the wealthy do their patriotic duty and find remedies for these problems within the parameters of the U.S. Constitution, the sooner their tax burden will ease. Best of all, those who are doing their patriotic duty of raising the future generation of patriots will have an easier time doing so.

The MAGA Mandate brought the rich and the working class together, perhaps for the first time. Let’s support this bond with everyone contributing their fair share to make America great again.