|
You wouldn’t know it
from all the April 15th protests, but most working Americans paid
lower taxes this year than ever. Thank goodness.
After nearly a
decade of no real wage growth, coupled with skyrocketing healthcare and
educational costs, most of us have been feeling pinched in the wallet ever
since the end of the economic growth of the Clinton years. And the tax cuts
that came during the recent Bush administration didn’t affect most of us ... unless
we happened to be millionaires.
But this year has
been different. Again - thank goodness! There were $173 billion (that’s
with a "B") in tax cuts this year ... and I’ll bet you never
heard about that in the news. The focus of those cuts was to create jobs and
stimulate the economy. And we all know, after the mess those big Wall Street
banks made of things, the economy certainly needs stimulating.
While Congress
finally passed extensions of unemployment benefits to help our neighbors who
lost their jobs in the recession (and they passed it without the help of our
local Congresswoman, who voted against them), it also passed the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which included a number of tax cuts for small
businesses and working families. These cuts mean the average tax refund this
year was about $3,000 - 10% more than last year.
In addition, there
was a $2,500 tax credit for families putting children through college, in the
hopes those children will find careers that are fairly recession-proof. Did you
make your home more energy-efficient (a good idea, considering the winter we
just had!)? That’s another $1,500 credit. Were you able to buy a home for the
first time? (Our local home builders sure hope so!) That’s another $8,000
credit. Are you just barely scraping by? The Earned Income Tax Credit was
increased for working single parents.
I happen to think
that anything that keeps more of my paycheck in my pocket for my family is a
good thing, and I’m pretty sure you agree. And it would have been a good thing
for our local congresswoman to have supported some of these ideas, but she
didn’t. Those of us in the middle class - those who make less than $250,000 a
year (and that’s most of us) - have had a hard time these last 2½ years, and we
know from history that the strongest democracies are the ones with the
strongest middle class.
I, for one, am glad
to see anything that helps us stay on our feet, keep our small
businesses, and raise our children to have a better future. We can only do that
if we keep people working.
The tax cuts of the
last administration didn’t do that. They were designed to allow the richest 2%
of Americans to have more money for luxuries, and to change our country into
one of the biggest debtor nations on the planet. In 8 short years we went from
having a surplus to a trillion (that’s with a "t")
dollar debt, with the country on the brink of a Depression.
I don’t like debt -
for myself or my country - but as a realist I know that total economic collapse
is NOT an option. Again, America
is strongest when we can get people back to work, and in tough economic times
the government is the only thing big enough to step in and help that happen. So
far, we‘ve done that with funds to reinvest in American roads and schools (like
the widening of 421 near the new high school), and tax credits for working
Americans and for the small businesses that create the most jobs.
Again, thank
goodness.
Katy June Abrams lives in the Blowing Rock precinct of Watauga County.
|
