How Much Is This Tax Cut Gonna Cost Me, Doc?

reason ^ | october 8, 2012 | A. Barton Hinkle

[lowbridge]

You walk into a shoe store. The salesman runs up to you. “Great news!” he beams. “We’ve just slashed our prices 20 percent!”

“Yikes!” you say. “I can’t afford a price cut like that! I’m outta here.”

“No, no — maybe you didn’t hear me,” the clerk says. “We’re cutting our prices 20 percent. Cutting, not raising.”

“I heard you just fine,” you say. “I’m not paying an outrageous increase like that!” And you storm out the door.

The preceding scenario makes no sense — except in the bizarro world of government finance. For that is precisely how many people speak, when they speak of taxes.

Take The Washington Post, which tore into Paul Ryan the other day for dancing around a question about tax cuts.

“Paul Ryan wants to tell you about the wonders of the 20 percent cut in tax rates that he and running mate Mitt Romney propose,” the paper intoned. “He doesn’t want to tell you how much it will cost.” The paper went on to praise Chris Wallace of Fox News for repeatedly asking Ryan “this basic question” and “citing projections of a 10-year cost of $5 trillion.”

[rawcatslyentist]

The 10 year cost will be 5 T.

The 10 year increase in revenue will be 55 T.

Math..... it's beyond the slave class.

[upchuck]

Last paragraph in the article:

So perhaps Ryan should have said something like this: “Tax cuts don’t cost money — they save money. Government spending is what costs money. If you think cutting taxes costs money, then you must think raising taxes saves money. By that logic, a 100 percent tax rate would mean Washington isn’t spending anything at all. And that, my friend, is absurd.”

Perfectly stated.

[jazusamo]

When the president says the country is “spending” money on tax breaks, he speaks as if the dollar in your pocket got there not through your hard work – but through his generosity.

Amen...Obama (and Democrats) think every American works for the benefit of the government and the government will decide how much to let us keep. He and liberals have to go...NOW!

[jeffc]

I hate it when liberals say junk like, “we can’t AFFORD a tax cut!”, or “How are we going to PAY for that tax cut?” They think all money belongs to the government, that the government can never have too much money.

[HiTech RedNeck]

liberals laff at the laffer curve

[RginTN]

Taxcuts increase revenue to govt. That’s how its paid for.