Not One Penny More

Jen Ezzell

Let us now praise famous men, and women.

At a legislative hearing in the state Capitol building on March 6, progressive Democrats on their way to vote in favor of higher taxes and more cumbersome regulations may not have noticed Jen Ezzell, of Lisbon, Conn., standing quietly flourishing two handmade signs, one of which read “CUT TAXES”, this above another hand lettered sign that read, more ominously for progressives, “NOT ONE PENNY MORE!”

If any of the progressive Democrats in the General Assembly had noticed Ezzell and her signs, it was not evident in later votes taken by dominant Democrats.

A Hartford paper noted for posterity the present clash of interests: “The legislature’s finance committee has approved a range of taxes as a starting point in negotiations with Gov. Ned Lamont, who said he is (sic) not in favor of tax increases when he submitted his budget in February.

“Liberals, community activists, labor unions and others are pushing for higher taxes they say will help fund programs to overcome racial and income disparities in housing, health care and other areas. Pushing back are businesses and Republican and moderate Democrat lawmakers who oppose the tax bill that emerged from the finance committee. Lamont said Thursday he would not sign the bill as it is.”

The paper listed the taxes to be imposed: a capital gains tax of 2 percent levied on “the sale or exchange of capital assets for taxpayers”; a “highway use tax on trucks”; “an insurance company tax”; a “tax on gross revenue” realized from digital advertising; higher “taxes on larger incomes”; a “permanent corporation tax surcharge”; a “health care tax”—and on and on. Together, the additional taxes represented many more than Ezzell’s one penny more.

Under “Taxpayer-friendly credits and exemptions,” dominant Democrats generously allowed a sales and use tax exemption for “breastfeeding supplies.” Let it not be said that compassionate, tax thirsty progressives are unwilling to shed a tear from time to time for motherhood. Anyone who knows how taxation works – certainly the protesting Ezzell – will understand that corporation taxes are usually passed on to consumers in an increase of the cost of services or goods, the majority of whom are not breastfeeding mothers.

Taxes on so called rich corporations are intended, mostly for campaign purposes, to make it appear that the taxing authority is in the process of providing tax equity; but, in reality, the corporation tax is paid by middle class dolts who do not understand why Ezzell bothered to hold up a sign before the greatest deliberative body in Connecticut that read “NOT ONE PENNY MORE.”

Presumably, Ezzell knows, from a casual perusal of history and her own direct experience, that taxes designed for campaign purposes to discomfort the rich, quickly trickle down to Connecticut’s dwindling middle classes. The income tax began as a one percent war-tax on the rich to pay for Civil War debt. It has over the course of years trickled down to Ezzel, as can easily be seen in all middle class paychecks.

In 2019, the average single American contributed 29.8% of their earnings to three taxes, according to Tax Foundation figures —income taxes, Medicare, and Social Security -- and the average income tax rate for all Americans was 14.6% in 2017.

Eventually, following the same historic track, asset and “mansion taxes” levied on half-millionaires will trickle down to hard-working non-millionaires. Ezzell knows this. And all the progressive legislators in Connecticut’s General Assembly who passed Ezzell by with a wink and a nod on their way to voting in favor of soak-the rich taxes know it as well.

Multibillionaire Warren Buffet once complained that he paid less in taxes than his middle class secretary. However, the corner business from which Buffett buys his pizzas likely paid the tax. The operative principle of progressive taxation is that the rich are too rich to pay taxes – but, an important and indispensable corollary -- middle class taxpayers are much too bewildered by glittering campaign promises to notice that they, in fact, will be footing the substantial bill for improvident spending.

The “NOT ONE PENNY MORE” in Ezzell’s signage is a blazing testament to the solid causal connection between taxing and spending, which may be put in populist language this way: the more they tax, the more they spend; the more they spend, the more they tax. Progressivism is the doctrine that the public good depends upon an unbroken continuation of the progressive principle until, in the luminous words of former British Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher, progressives “run out of other people’s money.”  

Therefore – NOT ONE PENNY MORE!

When or if the General Assembly recovers its good sense – that is, when it has decided to govern well rather than to campaign winningly – some appointed legislative leader should drape around Ezzell’s neck a Connecticut’s equivalent of the national Medal of Freedom Award. She, unlike the poor middle class sops continually being misled by self-interested political propagandists, will have deserved it.