47% Incentivized to not Work, Harder

Phyllis Schlafly wrote that in 2009, 47% of Americans "will pay no federal income taxes". Not only that, but the bottom 40% of earners "not only pay no income tax, but the government sends them cash or benefits". So doing some quick math, 53% of us subsidize 40% of Americans that receive either tax credits or some other form of government assistance.

In complementary fashion to this article, The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Larry Summers, current White House Economic Adviser, wrote in the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, ed. 1999,

"The second way government assistance programs contribute to long-term unemployment is by providing an incentive, and the means, not to work. Each unemployed person has a 'reservation wage'—the minimum wage he or she insists on getting before accepting a job. Unemployment insurance and other social assistance programs increase [the] reservation wage, causing an unemployed person to remain unemployed longer."

So in addition to redistributing wealth from 53% of taxed earners to the bottom 40%, the 53% of taxed earners subsequently pay the current 9.7% of the Nationally unemployed to remain out of a job because the incentive to find a job doesn't exist. Isn't this common sense? Why work when the "government" takes care of one through unemployment, COBRA, welfare assistance, etc.

"Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute has found that the average unemployment episode rose from 10 weeks before the recession to 19 weeks after Congress twice previously extended jobless benefits—to 79 from 26 weeks."

Even though unemployment beneficiaries take on average 19 weeks off from working, they can technically receive 79 weeks of unemployment. It's just ridiculous.

This Chicago Tribune article states, in "a 2009 report by the American Legislative Exchange Council: A decade's worth of hard data suggests that states with no individual income tax created 89 percent more jobs, and had 32 percent faster personal income growth, than did states with the highest income tax rates." So let's understand this, if a state has few tax burdens, i.e. one can infer they provide less State services, that State created 89% more jobs resulting in a personal income growth of 32%. So by whatever means the State does collect revenue, it collects more of it because the residents of said State are wealthier.

All this goes to show that the more burdensome government becomes, the less productive, less wealthy, more entitled, its Citizens become. Our country will cease to function at some point because the 53% of us paying taxes will have had enough. We'll never go back to WW2 personal income tax rates of 90+%. It's time to overthrow this crap.