The various chambers of commerce and assorted business organizations have managed to rally business owners around tax issues - and to support candidates with authoritarian spending agendas. They piously claim to hate taxes and maintain that they would pay higher wages - if only they didn't have to pay so much in taxes. That, of course, is pure nonsense.

Wages are a deductible business expense, not subject to tax and if they unilaterally paid higher wages to their workers their overall tax burden would lower - admittedly not as much as the wages, but there's more. These workers in turn would pay higher taxes - and with Republicans in charge of state and federal legislatures that would mean lower tax rates for them as workers took up a greater share of the tax burden. It's happened here in Oregon - without the higher wages,of course - due to failure to index taxes to inflation. That would entail a great deal of organizing as all businesses would have to be willing to do this [or at least enough to make a difference]. Basically it would require the same kind of organizing as fundraisers for authoritarian candidates [maybe they could help elect more real libertarian style candidates - those who don't support big military and mass incarceration scams].

Of course some of the side effects of this tax relief effort would be a reduction in pilfering from better paid employees, higher productivity, reduction in crime [even without an end to the idiotic war on crime], less need for welfare, and a better community. I'm not holding my breath on this sensible tax relief movement.