A plurality of Americans do not want lower taxes

It is amazing, in a disheartening sense, how ingrained in our politicians’ consciousness the aversion to taxes has become.  Grover Norquist’s anti-tax pledge has been so influential that Obama campaigned on the promise to not raise taxes on families making less than $250,000, and 172 Representatives and 34 Senators have signed the pledge.  (It’s funny that McCain, the Republican candidate, built one of his chief planks, health care reform, on raising taxes.)

But our politicians, on both sides of the aisle, are increasingly out of step with public opinion.  This NPR article has a great graphic from Gallup showing that Americans, for only the second time in over forty years, do not think that their taxes are too high.

With government taxes having fallen off a cliff and most Americans realizing the importance of the government’s role in health care, education, and infrastructure, it makes sense that people are less adverse to taxes than they have been in awhile.  (It also doesn’t hurt that the last two tax raises are associated in our national consciousness with an economic boom but those of GWB are not.)  While Obama has backed himself into a corner, subsequent politicians (and Obama post-2012) need to realize that raising taxes is no longer political suicide.