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Joseph D’Ambrosio

Professor Granillo

English 101

26 September 2018

The tax problem in America!!!

In America today, many people think that the tax system is unfair to. In Joseph E Stiglitz

article “A Tax System Stacked against he 99 Percent” which talks about how the taxes in

America is making the economic growth slower and how the 99 percent who pay their taxes take

on more of a burden. While making the 1 percent who are the very rich get even richer because

they avoid paying their taxes by finding loopholes in the system. Joseph E. Stiglitz article use a

lot of rhetorical devices to demonstrate and explain his idea that the America economy is going

to grow at a slower rate if the tax system is unfair to most of America and with logos which is

hard evidence, ethos the author credibility or ethic and pathos the use of emotions; all the

rhetoric device was created by a man called Aristotle a famous Greek philosopher in the era

300BC. Though the use of a lot of logos but a little too much of logos kind of and some ethos

and pathos, Joseph E. Stiglitz get his point across and all in all his article convincing.

Joseph E. Stiglitz primarily uses a lot of logos in his article “A Tax System Stacked

Against the 99 Percent” to show reasoning or proof on how the tax system is stacked against

most of America. In the article it says that “In 2009, 116 out of 400 earners almost a third paid

less than 15 percent of their income in taxes” (Stiglitz 287). This exert from the article shows

the use of logos by using data from the year 2009 to help prove his point. This example just

shows that the top earners of that year about almost a third of failed to pay their fair share of
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taxes to the country. Which again can lead to many problems being forced down to the rest or the

other 99 percent of the country.

This is not the only use of logos that Joseph E. Stiglitz uses in his article. In fact, there

are many more of them used. Like when Joseph E. Stiglitz mentions in his article “The richest

400 individual’s taxpayers, with an average income of $200 million, payless than 20 percent of

their income in taxes far lower than mere millionaires, who pay about 25 percent of their income

in taxes, and about the same as those earning a mere $200,000 to $500,000 annual” (Stiglitz

287). This passage shows how unfair the tax system is by logos and giving the readers an actual

representation with the numbers and how the top is paying their taxes lower than millionaire and

paying as much as the high middle class. This quote gives us the evidence on how unfair system

is for not catching this and in turn slows economic growth because the more money you make

the higher you pay in taxes but the richest aren’t doing that which will cause problems to the

lower classes in the long run. However, Joseph E. Stiglitz doesn’t use just logos to get his point

across, but he also uses ethos in his article.

Ethos is ethic and values of a person or group of people. Another way ethos helps is it

show credibility of an article to. Joseph E. Stiglitz has the authority to talk about this topic

because of his background and his past experiences or values. Stiglitz is a very notable

economist because the article says the he won the “Nobel prize for economics back in 2001”

(Stiglitz 286). That is big because the Nobel prize of economics, or officially known as the

Sverige’s Riksbank Prize in Economic Science, is the probably one of the biggest things to get as

an economist. It given by the Royal Swedish Academy of Science to researcher that do great in

economist science like the author. This gives the author Joseph E. Stiglitz a huge amount of
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creditability to him connecting that to his ethos use in the article makes it more reliable to listen

too, but he uses a little more of ethos to help him sound more convincing.

Another use ethos is when in the article that Joseph E. Stiglitz mentions is in the end that

“If America believe that the government is unfair that ours is a government of the 1 percent, for

the 1 percent, and by the 1 percent then faith in our democracy will surely perish” (Stiglitz 294).

So, he is implying that many people in America think that its value on the tax system are just for

the 1 percent and the people believe that if the government does that its unfair and it will make

faith in this democracy perish. This just goes to show how in the what might happen in America

and what the people that live here think about this unfair treatment in their tax system. There’s

one more way in how Joseph E. Stiglitz shows his ethos and credibility.

The last way he shows his credibility about what he is talking about in the article is when

again he tells us that he has a lot of background experience dealing in economics and money.

Joseph E. Stiglitz was the “chief economist and vice president at the world bank” (Stiglitz 286).

The world bank is an international financial institution that has 189 countries involved, created in

1944 and is based in Washington, D.C. it provides loans to countries of the world for capital

project. This give Joseph E. Stiglitz major power or authority to talk about the subject at hand in

the Article “A Tax System Stacked Against the 99 Percent” which mostly is about the unfair tax

system and how it is making Americas economic growth slower and harder for the middle and

lower classes making them take most of the burden. However, Joseph E Stiglitz still use more

use of rhetoric device which is pathos.

Pathos is the use of emotions in a persuasive piece of text or used in any type of writing.

One way that Joseph E Stiglitz provides pathos through his article that he quotes Leon Helmsley

who was a hotel chain executive and was convicted of federal tax evasion in 1989. Leon
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Helmsley goes on to say that “only the little people pay taxes” (qtd. In Stiglitz 286). This is

basically stating that rich people like Helmsley might think that only the week or financially

challenged people should pay taxes. That the rich don’t have to pay making them get richer and

leaving the middle class and lower to struggle, making slow economically growth. At the same

time this passage shows how mean or how the rich can be blind to the lower classes and have no

compassion for them at all. This makes the readers get emotions or feelings like maybe hatred

toward how Leon Helmsley regards the “little people” and it can give us feelings of compassion

towards the families of the lower class that are struggling due to the ignorant rich people that

don’t pay their fair share of taxes towards the government.

Another way that promote emotions or pathos in his article to show how the American

economy slow growth rate and the unfair of the tax system to most of the population of the U.S.

Is that he states, “by contrast, it is unpleasant to spend one’s days fine tuning dishonest and

deceptive practices that siphon money off the poor as was common in the financial crisis of

2007-2008” (Stiglitz 292). This just resembles how he makes us feel angry towards the rich

from stealing from the people that already poor. Aside from that it led to a finical crisis because

how the rich kept taking all the money leading even into a bigger problem in the U.S.

All these reasons show how the author of “A Tax System Stacked Against the 99

percent” Joseph E. Stiglitz presents to the reader through the use of rhetoric devices logos,

pathos and ethos created by Aristotle to help us understand and convince the reader to think that

the tax system in America is unfair to the 99 percent and how it can lead to a slower economic

growth or worst like the financial crisis back in 2007-2008. So the author implores you to help

fill up the gaps or the loopholes in the tax system in America by stating the problem because if

we cant do that then it makes America look like it only benefits the 1 percent and not the rest of
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their population and we don’t want that to happen because it can major problems as we saw in

the article “A Tax System Stacked Against the 99 Percent”.

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Works Cited

Stiglitz, E Joseph. “A Tax System Stacked Against the 99 Percent.” The Great Divide (2013):

286-295. They say I say. Essay.