Why pay 20% when you can pay 28%?

On Sunday night I had the pleasure of listening to a conservative AM radio talk show. I live to tell the story, miaculously, but that is beside the point.

One of the callers was telling the host that he was sick and tired of "libruls" and their damn IRS. The host and caller agreed that what they really wanted was a flat tax, or better yet, a national sales tax. The caller said that he was a "regular" person who was solidly middle/lower-middle class.

It is a testament to the right's disinformation campaign/noise machine that they can get people who work for a paycheck to complain about a progressive tax system. I understand the ivory tower debates about what type of tax system we want, etc. But at the end of the day, people (I assume) want to pay as little taxes as possible (myself included). So despite the fact that flat taxes/national sales taxes would almost certainly raise the caller's tax rate, he prefers it.

Amazing. The progressive movement is going to have to focus on countering 30 years, and billions of dollars, of right-wing think tank money/media machine to convince the caller that maybe he really wants a lower tax rate (via progressive taxation) rather than a higher tax rate (via flat tax/national sales tax).