Not your standard Auntie
McGowan, Jo
in East Harlem that flourished in...
...market crashed...
...Chesterton was when she took me to Mass at Emmaus the two and settled in happily on the my mother's godfather...
...They had I am going to have to ask you to leave just arrived in California when the stock immediately...
...14.1 percent, down from 19.1 percent in 1981...
...How did God dare...
...companied him on the tour...
...Years later, she and my writers...
...Those lobbying for a big tax cut em- Even the best-off, who would no phasize a different number...
...The Congressional is taking a larger share of the economy Budget Office finds that in inflation-adin taxes (roughly 20 percent) than it's justed dollars, the after-tax incomes of taken at any time since World War II...
...On Elecpolicies to shift the income-tax burden tion Day these numbers will matter...
...There and quickly achieved success, publishyear, I just might agree...
...the top 1 percent have risen by 24 perOver the last quarter-century, this num- cent since 1987-from $379,712 then to ber has hovered between 17.2 percent $471,664 now...
...Middle- and tution colleague Bill Gale points out, is No wonder Bush says over and over lower-income Americans are paying less the lowest it's been since 1966...
...in the world that somehow had the efa fierceness about the love I have for her "Settling down" is just a phrase, of fect of making all of us sure of ourselves...
...holding down full-time jobs themselves...
...pendent woman that she gave to me, me on reaching what she said was the Families closer to the bottom-those my sisters, her own daughters, and who best age of all...
...On April 1, the they fell under the spell of the Baroness ing four within a few years, all with Dial...
...0 away from people in the middle and at © 2000, Washington Post Writers Group Commonweal 8 May 5, 2000...
...four at the median income was 7.5 per- income tax, they might win a stronger, The rebellion against taxes has abat- cent in 1999, down from 11.8 percent at if still muffled, response...
...In her mid-sixties, long past the age most people are dreaming of retirement, pril is the cruelest month, year, Aunt Sheila appeared in the Acad- while still working in the writers' agency, according to T.S...
...Their income-tax recognize and draw upon...
...matters, the three little girls grew up "Oh, Madame," the waiter said, all very fast...
...Old enough to know what earning half of the median incomeknows how many others, has given us a you want and young enough to enjoy it," have never had it so good where income strength we are only now beginning to she said in her deep, slightly sultry voice...
...The "Never shout `the sky is falling' truth-I can't imagine her lying-and money earned was sometimes all the unless the sky is really falling...
...day and the month barely begun, I got de Hueck Doherty's Friendship House, In between, she also spun two mystery a call here in India from my sister in the and later Dorothy Day and the Catholic novels...
...The me- that his plan to cut income taxes is a in federal income taxes now than they sign of courage because it's unpopular...
...the tax burden...
...mid-1970s and early 1980s...
...The Clin- cent in 1983, 72 percent in 1987, and 79 A the antitax movement...
...When my mother and her twin flustered and apologetic...
...I'm terribly were just ten, and my Aunt Sheila seven, sorry...
...I emy Award-winning film Cavalcade...
...Their burden is in payroll upheaval against taxes helped create the sury Department figures, the average taxes...
...stride with the passage of California's working Americans...
...The middle class and the poor aren't tax-cutting Proposition 13...
...In 1929, my House, the radical Catholic community deserted white sands...
...G.K...
...My Masi was ly marrying Leo Callahan and settling a wonderful certainty about her place not just like my mother, and yet there is down to raise her own four children...
...But somebody is paying the bills...
...The two the literary scene of London in the early days...
...Rea- earners has risen steadily: It was 68 perwithout much noise from gan cut taxes across the board...
...Their parents, the MacGills, were tinued her involvement in the "under- tance from where they were camped both novelists and very much a part of ground church," " as it was known in those was an exclusive private club...
...When I In India, maternal aunts are very spe- When, after five years, my mother left heard that she had had a stroke, I was cial people...
...in East Harlem that flourished in the'60s...
...NOT YOUR STANDARD AUNTIE There was a place for everyone-includShe lived by her own rules ing a large collection of cats...
...She lived by her own family had to buy food with...
...They get more in women could not be priests, for instance, right she was, but it doesn't really mat- subsidies from the Earned Income Tax she treated as beneath contempt, not ter: she already knew...
...If political candidates proposed majorities that made Ronald Reagan federal income-tax rate on a family of cuts in the payroll tax rather than the president...
...11 Credit than they pay in income taxes...
...The share of income taxes paid by the top one-fifth of pri115 has come and gone the bottom of the economic ladder...
...The share of the income That represents a big polit- on the wealthy, but it also gave tax cuts tax take from the top 1 percent, the truly ical shift...
...A !S THE TAX REVOLT OVER...
...The idea that I had looked forward to telling her how rate is now negative...
...She and Uncle Leo hosted Masses and JO McGOWAN discussion groups in their apartment, and welcomed interminable processions of students, peace activists, and lost souls...
...taxes are concerned...
...Moved by the idea of houses both of them...
...There sister is called Masi...
...churning stock market has produced a Let's look at the bottom line lot of capital-gains taxes, and the welloff are paying more...
...ton tax plan of 1993 raised the top rates percent in 1999...
...tax isn't the burden it once was...
...the past has been clicking through my life Aunt Sheila led...
...dian, now at roughly $46,700, is smack arbitrary standards the world threw at When I turned forty, she called to wish in the middle of the middle class: half of her...
...They'll say, doubt like an income tax-cut, have reacorrectly, that the federal government son for prudence...
...The example of a free and inde- me a happy birthday and to congratulate all families earn above it, half below it...
...Within minutes, a grandfather was invited to give a series of waiter from the club appeared and said lectures in America and the family ac- f haughtily "Ladies, this is a private club...
...It able woman...
...For days course...
...that places her in that pantheon...
...taxes where they are, as long as the econWhat's changed is the distribution of omy (and their incomes) keep growing...
...The year 2000 is not the year and subsidies (through the Earned In- wealthy, has gone from 20 percent in 1978, when the last tax revolt hit full come Tax Credit) to the poorest of 1983 to 29 percent now...
...Polls suggest that many and 20.3 percent, and it's on the high- among the well-off are willing to keep end now...
...The colloquial trans- own for several more years, until final- was a magnificent confidence about her, lation is "just like mother...
...In Hindi, which has a differ- the city to marry my father, Aunt Sheila more taken aback than anything else: ent name for every relation, a mother's continued running the house on her Aunt Sheila...
...She also con- not terribly clean...
...Even the better-off parts of the midOF SEVERAL MKMN~ dle class aren't doing badly...
...I must have been no more than ten girls climbed over the rock wall dividing part of the century...
...Babies took up a lot of My favorite Aunt Sheila story occurred mind like slides in a projector, each image her time, but didn't stop her from work- when she was around sixteen...
...totally irrelevant...
...Certainly it does not describe the We were related to her, were we not...
...A popular Here's the result: According to Trea- off the hook...
...But how to convey the formidable expected to live...
...DIONNE, Jr...
...way she strode through life...
...But just a short disland...
...overnight, the lecture Aunt Sheila drew herself up to her tour evaporated and they were left full height (she was very tall, and also stranded and penniless...
...She had a celebration of the life of this remark- ing at a series of jobs (from a switchboard gone to the beach with her friend Lois...
...The next day, I learned ries of homeless women, all the while nature of her personality, the imperious that she had died that morning...
...But most of ed because, for most Americans, taxes its peak in 1981...
...For most Americans, the income after-tax incomes have gone up, too...
...Sheila, Mom's younger sister and my of hospitality, they opened one in their The above is all by way of introducgodmother, had had a stroke and wasn't own apartment and took in a long se- tion...
...Ronald Reagan's tax All of this helps explain why big tax cuts of the early 1980s and the 1986 tax cuts don't work for politicians now the reform combined with Bill Clinton s tax way they did for Ronald Reagan...
...The tax rates on He's right about its lack of political the wealthy have gone up, but their reach...
...Saint Martin's Press published United States saying that our Aunt Worker...
...The median family's them, including George W. Bush, focus are not the burden they were in the income-tax rate, as my Brookings Insti- on big income tax cuts for top earners...
...were two decades ago...
...Aunt Sheila and my moth- operator to an editorial assistant in a large was a public beach, very crowded and er and her twin sister were born in Eng- Manhattan writers' agency...
...drop-dead gorgeous) and said, "I am Because their novel-writing parents Sheila MacGill and this is my friend were almost comically inept in worldly Lois...
...Her Aunt Sheila decided to take up the famA have never believed it, since immortal one line was, "I don't want to ily trade (both her sisters were published it contains the birthdays of be the Boers...
...I didn't realize...
...Eliot...
...That same set of rules and she believed in creating Commonweal 7 May 5, 2000 her life according to them, not by any even worth discussing...
...they published and sold a small hand- It was so typical of her: the absolute printed neighborhood newspaper...
...Families earning twice the median are paying E.J...
...She began with children's books, three of my favorite people...
...But after this mother moved to New York City...
Vol. 127 • May 2000 • No. 9
