Enough is enough. It’s time the poor pay their fair share in taxes. After all, fairness is what we’re all about these days. Uh, er, at least according to the libs. (Recall this Stribitorial. Or this Uncle Nick column.)

Going back once again to the 2007 MN Dept of Revenue Tax Incidence Report, here are the personal income tax rates by population decile:

And worse,

The top 5% and 1% of households have even higher effective tax rates, at 6.1 and 6.5 percent respectively.

Look at all those freeloaders at the lower end of the scale! How fair is it that the higher income levels have to pay so much more as a percentage of their income? When will Uncle Nick and the Strib come to their defense?

What’s more, the report says this about the “unfairness” in overall effective tax rates:

The results show that the individual income tax was very progressive, while the three remaining taxes were generally regressive. Because the progressive individual income tax accounted for over one-third of the total tax burden, it offsets most of the regressivity of the other state and local taxes. Hence, as a whole, the state and local system of taxation in Minnesota was only slightly regressive overall.

Isn’t it curious that the Left’s response to perceived “unfairness” is not to lower the tax burden for the lower income levels, but to jack up the tax rates for the higher levels, even though they are already paying far more in income tax, which is earned, created from nothing, hewn out of the cold, unforgiving world.

And as these hard workers come back to their homes, ready to share with their family the fruits of their labor, there is some obese, perfumed panjandrum of a tax collector sitting there, ready to confiscate a chunk and use it to buy the votes of their political patrons.

In the Sunday Star Tribune, on the Opinion page there was a piece by Charlie Quimby and Dane Smith. (Charlie blogs at Across the Great Divide. I met him once at MPR’s Election Night fest, and seems like a perfectly nice guy. We also share the same alma mater.) The purpose of the piece was to set up a straw man and light him on fire.

Their argument seemed to be that whether or not people physically flee the state to avoid high tax rates is the most important, or even the sole, determination of whether or not tax rates are fair. They argued that there was not a “serious millionaire drain”, and so things are fine and hunkey-dorey here in the People’s Republic of Minnesota.

Left unexamined was what high tax rates to do investment, to job creation, to lack of incentive to achieve or open businesses, revenue lost because taxpayers avoid behavior that would cause high taxation, etc…

It does our society no good to tell an increasing percentage of the population that they can enjoy government benefits by making someone else pay for it. The wealthiest among us pay an inordinate share of the overall tax burden. It’s time to soak the poor! If, after all, we’re concerned about being fair.

Update: Ah, good. Here’s why I left a true fisking of the Quimby/Smith piece to my betters.