Ramesh Ponnuru on the 47 percent

Many writers (including, ahem, one guest poster to this blog) have fretted that the 47 percent of Americans who pay nothing in income taxes are freeloaders who pose a threat to the nation’s moral fabric. This worry has issued recently in the unusual spectacle of a Republican presidential candidate calling  for tax increases. Not on the rich, but on the poor.

There are a few problems with this idea, but the most obvious is that Americans who pay no income taxes do pay a battery of other taxes, including sales tax, property tax, and payroll tax. Indeed, a substantial percentage of these citizens pay no income tax because of family-friendly tax reform ideas like the child credit.

It would be a shame if religiously motivated voters embraced rhetoric aimed against family-friendly policies they successfully championed in the past. As Ramesh Ponnuru warns in a new article for National Review , “worrying too much about this number will lead conservatives down an intellectual and political dead end.”

I strongly encourage you to read Ramesh’s  full take .