Maybe we should take a more basic perspective when looking at the right and left or the "right things to do"...let's see... The "right wing" clearly primarily, almost exclusively, defends the rich. The left routinely defends the people that aren't rich. The right wing is for Bush's tax cuts (for "small businesses" like Bechtel...you know...that mom and pop operation). The left is against tax cuts for the very wealthy (like they actually need it to begin with), and that even more clearly, the "unrich" need desperately. The right is against the idea of tax breaks for for regular people...unless....they get their cut. The right is for privatizing social security, for dismantling medicare, for privatizing Veterans benefits. The left is for leaving those issues in place. The right (compliments of Georgey....the right wing's best available representative at the time) is for tying your 401K to Wall street so that if Wall street does poorly/tanks/goes belly up...so too does your future and all that you've worked all your life for. The left (Obama) frequently rails against Wall street. Of the examples list above....which of the choices would be the "right things to do"? Which ones would benefit society as a whole, and which ones serve only those with the greatest of wealth? Is it really that difficult a choice when it comes to voting FOR the greatest percentage of society or FOR the top income stealers (I mean "earners")?
Politics and the ''right thing to do'' rarely go hand in hand. The right thing is what it is. It has no party attachment.
Reagan changed the tax code, where the top marginal individual income tax rate fell from 70% to 28%, and there was a major reversal in the tax treatment of business income, with effect of reducing the tax bias among types of investment but increasing the average effective tax rate on new investment. The effect was primarily a change in the composition of tax revenue, towards payroll (in other words, you and I) and new investment, and away from higher earners and capital gains on existing investments In other words, the already wealthy), with comparatively small effect on overall tax revenue: the changes "reduced the federal revenue share of GDP from 20.2 percent in fiscal 1981 to 19.2 percent in fiscal 1989," a 1% reduction. So the amount of tax revenue didn't change much but who paid changed significantly. But it is still not enough for these people. They want to pay no taxes and use the commons for free.
