Tax reform is a long, hard bore

Just like my New York coworker, my mom seems to fit the bill of someone who would support higher taxes.  She is a liberal from Connecticut who didn’t even vote for Reagan in ‘84, and she’s received steady raises and bonuses over the previous decade; her income puts her comfortably in the upper middle class, and she could forgo an extra few thousand dollars a year.  At home for the holiday season, I mentioned my blog to her, and her response – “Why would we want more taxes?” – was exactly what I feared.

It’s pretty clear to me that the grounds have not been prepared for the necessary tax increases that we face as a country.  Few politicians will pass a bill, no matter how necessary it is for our country’s health, if they suspect it will jeopardize their reelection chances.  Just as for-profit corporations have not adopted green measures until their cost calculus changed, we can’t expect politicians to face reality until we make it clear that the majority of their constituents already have.

This is ultimately the difference between healthcare reform in ‘94 and ‘09: 15 years of agitation and explanation had laid the groundwork for substantive reform, and Democrats could (mostly) act knowing they were undertaking popular measures.  Serious tax reform, which remains a technocratic issue, does not hold the same status, and it probably won’t for some time.  The sooner Americans make it clear to their politicians that income taxes must be raised, corporate tax loopholes must be closed, some form of VAT should be implemented, etc., the sooner our country will regain its fiscal health.