William McGurn has a piece at the online Wall Street Journal asking exactly why Republicans have a hard time providing moral argumentation for tax reductions affecting billionaires. The other side, he points out, have their contentions well in place.
In [Senator Bernie Sandners, Vermont] nearly nine-hour remarks, excerpts of which are now going viral on the Internet, he framed the lack of a tax hike for the rich as a surrender to greed. In so doing, he inadvertently raised another question: How come Republicans have such a hard time speaking just as forthrightly about the moral underpinnings of their side of this argument?
What? Moral underpinnings? Well, McGurn appears to believe they exist, but he thinks Republicans are stuck on function. The tax rates against the rich rarely do what they are supposed to do.
. . . Republicans tend to answer these class-warfare screeds with purely functional arguments. How, for example, higher tax rates aimed at “millionaires and billionaires” have a habit of hitting quite a few others (the Alternative Minimum Tax anyone?). How such taxes seldom produce the promised revenue bounty. Or how our real problem is not tax revenues but government spending.
He would frame matters differently. Greed, he notes, is an “insatiable” desire for more and more wealth. So McGurn suggests instead, when taxpayers who want to keep as much of their own money as possible are compared to the governing class that continually seeks to take it, “whose appetite better warrants the word insatiable?”
The advantage the Democrats have is the word “fair.” Fair is fair and everyone should pay their fair share. Okay, says McGurn, define “fair.” Is it 35 percent of income? 50 percent? 75 percent?” It is never marked out.
I tend to agree with him, just me talking here. It is “fair,” Sanders and others say, to the rest of us that billionaires should pay more taxes. Me being a sort of flat-tax guy, I don’t understand how that’s especially fair. Where is my incentive—greed if you insist—for gaining more wealth than at present only to end up being “fair” to the rest of you? If I had enough wealth that someone else believed I should be taxed more than I already am, I’m pretty certain I would not consider their opinion fair. Fortunately, I don’t. But if I did it would be in real estate, because I resonate to the refrain of a folk song:
Pity the downtrodden landlord
His back all burdened and bent.
Respect his gray hairs.
Don’t ask for repairs.
And don’t fall behind in the rent.
December 16th, 2010 | 10:51 am
I don’t see the argument here. Government demand for revenue is “insatiable” precisely because American voters have decided they want government to do things like fight wars in other countries and care for the elderly and indigent through SS, Medicare and Medicaid. That’s the majority of federal spending right there and it’s also where most of the future growth in spending will come from.
You don’t like higher taxes? Then what do you propose to cut to balance the budget?
Moreover, the above post is built on a false premise as Clinton did indeed raise taxes in 1993 and tax revenue as a percentage of GDP grew throughout the 1990s. Not all of that was due to tax rates of course — the growth of silicon valley was a big factor as well. It still refutes the notion that higher taxes will not lead to higher revenue.
December 16th, 2010 | 12:32 pm
I want to see Bernie Sanders’ most recent 1040.
December 16th, 2010 | 3:33 pm
What’s unfair is for one generation to tax itself insufficiently to pay for what it spends, thus passing on a large portion of the cost (plus interest) for their spending to later generations. Spend less or tax more — or a combination of the two. That is the only moral course for this generation. Our fiscal practices and our sexual practices have this in common: they both seek the pleasure without taking adult responsibility for its natural consequences.
December 17th, 2010 | 12:42 am
“Our fiscal practices and our sexual practices have this in common: they both seek the pleasure without taking adult responsibility for its natural consequences.”
Republican borrow-and-spend economics as adolescent immorality. Gotta love it.
December 17th, 2010 | 8:48 am
That folk song illustrates the idiocy of class warfare. The story of actual landlords rather than folk-song ones is very sad, at least for some landlords. Many immigrants and other people with little education in New York City bought rental properties as a way to move up in the world. They didn’t reckon with New York’s rent control laws and other laws heavily weighted against the evil landlords. They could not do required maintenance and upgrades without raising rents, and they could not raise rents. Many lost all they had as their buildings went into foreclosure. It is so easy to demonize people when you picture them as little monopoly men in top hats. It seems “fair” to take away from those guys.
December 19th, 2010 | 12:44 am
Judy, that wasn’t my experience in New York. In my experience, landlords were corporate entities that double charged for building repairs that weren’t done and hired foreign-born superintendents to work part-time while contractually obligated to hire full-time supers.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact