Posted on 04/08/2012 10:58:25 PM PDT by neverdem
(Excerpt)
The U.S. does not have a significantly smaller welfare state than the European nations. We’re just better at hiding it. The Europeans provide welfare provisions through direct government payments. We do it through the back door via tax breaks.
For example, in Europe, governments offer health care directly. In the U.S., we give employers a gigantic tax exemption to do the same thing. European governments offer public childcare. In the U.S., we have child tax credits. In Europe, governments subsidize favored industries. We do the same thing by providing special tax deductions and exemptions for everybody from ethanol producers to Nascar track owners.
These tax expenditures are hidden but huge. Budget experts Donald Marron and Eric Toder added up all the spending-like tax preferences and found that, in 2007, they amounted to $600 billion...
--snip--
The late David Bradford, a Princeton economist, had the best illustration of how the system works. Suppose the Pentagon wanted to buy a new fighter plane. But instead of writing a $10 billion check to the manufacturer, the government just issued a $10 billion “weapons supply tax credit.” The plane would still get made. The company would get its money through the tax credit. And politicians would get to brag that they had cut taxes and reduced the size of government!
--snip--
Many of these individual tax expenditures are good for the country, like the charitable deduction and the earned income tax credit. But, as the economist Bruce Bartlett demonstrates in his impeccably fair-minded book, “The Benefit and the Burden,” the cumulative effect of these tax breaks is terrible. Like overgrown weeds, the tangle of tax breaks distorts behavior, clogs the economy and deprives the government of revenue.
And because they are hidden, many of the tax expenditures go to those who need them...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
America Is Europe?
Eh, No NYT, it actually isn’t !
Given that all property belongs to the gov’t, letting people keep more of their money via tax breaks counts as a subsidy. That is Brooks’ argument in a nutshell.
How does this paper stay alive after it’s been so close to death for so long . . . ?
Isn’t Brooks the homosexual with the pant crease fetsih?
A tax BREAK is most emphatically NOT the same thing as a government expenditure.
Tax breaks leave the money in the system where it can grow, while taxes suck the money out of the system.
Because there are so many administrators for every dollar spent by the government on its programs, anything spent by the govvie is a HUGE drain on its resources (US!).
Eliminate (10% per year, including related staff) EVERYTHING not mentioned by name in the constitution and watch the entire Western world’s economies make the “Asian Dragons” eat dust.
I read that Brooks was impressed by well creased Obama pants, but not about Brooks being gay.
Who are you trying to kid? Whether the gov't fails to collect, or they spent the money directly, how is the financial loss to the gov't not the same?
Tax breaks leave the money in the system where it can grow, while taxes suck the money out of the system.
You're talking about the gov't picking winners and losers. After the gov't picking so many losers, I say end all forms of subsidy except some forms of basic scientific research that only the feds have the pockets to fund, e.g. fusion reactors, storage batteries, NIH, etc., not agribusiness, etc.
Subsidized corn ethanol production took food cropland out of production. Food shortages have been cited as a precipitating cause of Egypt's Arab Spring.
Well, if that’s what you think, why don’t you just forego all your income tax deductions. After all, a tax break is exactly the same as a tax deduction/reduction/government spending, by your reasoning above.
The way I read what you wrote, all money is government money, and we should be grateful we’re allowed to keep any...
Winners, losers? That will sort itself out if the gov’t stops stealing everyone’s children’s money by spending more than it takes in.
Does Wal-Mart subsidize its customers by charging lower prices?
It’s late, and perhaps I misunderstood your point.
Good night.
Exactly. From the article,
In Europe, governments subsidize favored industries. We do the same thing by providing special tax deductions and exemptions for everybody from ethanol producers to Nascar track owners.
These tax expenditures are hidden but huge. Budget experts Donald Marron and Eric Toder added up all the spending-like tax preferences ..... (Emphasis added.)
This is all vintage Kennedyspeak, straight out of some old Teddy Kennedy tirade full of demands to "close the loopholes" (raise taxes).
Brooksie is a 60's liberal Democrat. Only at The New York Times, where swish is delish and gay is the Way, would Brooks be considered "conservative". He's Anna Quindlen in a two-piece.
Europe is failing, again.
Lets cut the programs.
Being impressed by the crease in another man’s pants is gay, in my opinion.
What's with the ad hominems? That's usually a tactic of the left when they can't argue on the merits of a proposition, in this case a tax code filled with all sorts of subsidies.
Maybe Brooks was at a loss for words to write anything else that impressed him with his Obama interview.
Comrade! The newspeak is that all tax breaks are stealing from the State and the People!
Most of the MSM pundit class seems pretty gay to me.
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