To the editor,
In his Oct. 5, Great Bend Tribune public forum letter, Dave Trabert, CEO of the Kansas Policy Institute, claims the problem with the Brownback 2012 income tax cut fiscal train wreck was that expenditures were not cut. In his book of 227 footnotes and 164 pages, he omitted that to make his claim true, the 2012 budget would have had to have been cut 13 percent for 2013. Then as student populations and costs increased, it would have had to remain frozen for another six years through 2019, and likely beyond. Trabert offers no explanation of how could this have happened without harming education and public works. Not one word. Welcome to the deceive by omission, false reality world of the KPI. The last chapter of the book describes Trabert’s approach to his role as a professional propagandist. It includes statements such as: Truth is irrelevant. Restructure... perceptions to create the position you desire. Messaging must be... relentless.
Dark money funded political propaganda platforms such as KPI and our state legislative political party bosses with whom they align, function with an unspoken first loyalty: Work to provide a benefit to those of us with the most money relative to those of us with less.
These efforts always have a certainty and a hope. The certainty is large tax cuts for the wealthy. The hope is deficit reduction or trickle-down economics or job creation. The certainty always happens and the hope always fails.
Promoters of these efforts never encumber themselves with any liability when the hopes fail. Instead, they gen up a new version of the same effort. Thus, we have the current flat tax campaign. Analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy predicted the top 1% of Kansas wage earners would see an average tax cut of $11,510, while the bottom 20% would receive a $192 cut.
Because of sales and property taxes, those of us with the most money pay a smaller share of our income for our total state and local tax bill than those of us with less. Kansans with the top 1% of income pay only 7.4% of their income in total taxes while those in the bottom 20% pay 11.4%, according to the most current analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. The no income tax states that Trabert aspires Kansas to become are worse. In Florida the top 1% only pay 2.3% of income in taxes while the bottom 20% pay 12.7%.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, from 1989 to 2019, the share of our nation’s total wealth held by the 1% of families in the top 1% increased from 27% to 34%. The share held by the 50% of families in the 0 to 50th percentiles decreased from 4% to 2%. This is not some small portion of our population with special limitations or poor life management decisions. It is half of us. Half of us saw a miniscule 4% share of total wealth, shrink to 2%.
Trabert’s plan is for those of us in the top 20%, who hold over 72% of our nation’s wealth, to receive a tax reduction over twice as large as those of us in the bottom 50%, who hold only 2%.
Flat tax promoters will not propose stand-alone property tax relief, sales tax reduction, or middle- and low-income tax reductions that benefit most working Kansans. Rather they try to add the minimum of these benefits required to enact legislation to serve their first loyalty: No Kansans get any tax cuts if wealthy Kansans do not first receive the major benefit.
John Sturn
Ellinwood
