Posted on 05/17/2012 4:10:41 AM PDT by Kaslin
Putting Republicans in charge is never a guarantee of good public policy. It was during the Bush years, for instance, that the nation was saddled with a prescription drug entitlement. The GOPers in the White House and on Capitol Hill also recklessly increased the burden of government spending. And they expanded the “affordable lending requirements” on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, thus helping to create the housing crisis.
More recently, a majority of Republicans in the House and Senate voted to expand corporate welfare by increasing the authority of the corrupt Export-Import Bank. And that’s after voting last year to increase housing subsidies!
But this doesn’t mean all Republicans are bad. Ronald Reagan unambiguously was a net plus for freedom, and congressional Republicans mostly tried to do the right thing in the mid-1990s.
The main thing to understand is that there is an ongoing fight inside the Republican Party between those who want to do the right thing and those who see politics as a means of accumulating and exercising power.
The latest example of this battle is taking place in Oklahoma, where the Governor has proposed to eliminate the state income tax and her main opponents are members of the corrupt GOP establishment.
The Wall Street Journal has editorialized on the issue, and makes all the correct points.
Do Republicans stand for economic growth and tax reform, or not? That question is on the table in Oklahoma, where GOP Governor Mary Fallin has a plan to cut and eventually eliminate the income tax. Her main opposition: fellow Republicans in the state Senate. …Ms. Fallin points to decades of evidence that America’s nine no-income tax states have had superior population, income and job growth. The case for a Sooner State tax cut has taken on new urgency because neighboring Texas has no income tax and Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska are working toward or have already enacted rate cuts this year. …A cavalcade of lobbyists, including local Chambers of Commerce, teachers unions and welfare groups are fighting the tax cut. The Tulsa and Oklahoma City Chambers are pleading for corporate welfare that benefits politically connected large corporations, rather than rate cuts for all businesses.
I’m no longer surprised when I read about the Chamber of Commerce supporting bad policy. Big business rarely is a friend of freedom.
But I am very disappointed to read that economists at some of the state universities have climbed into bed with the political elite.
Last week economists on the public payroll from the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State came out against the tax cut. Cynthia Rogers of OU said that the evidence on whether income-tax cuts help the economy is “inconclusive.” Maybe in the faculty lounge. But Oklahomans can see the jobs bonanza across the border in Texas, which pays its bills with a sales tax. …Meanwhile, states with some of the highest income-tax rates—California, Maryland and Illinois—have had the toughest time keeping out of the red. New Hampshire, Tennessee, Florida and others that don’t levy an income tax manage to balance their budget nearly every year.
The WSJ makes a very good point about real-world evidence. Texas and California are both role models, and they demonstrate that states with no income taxes kick the you-know-what of states with class-warfare fiscal systems.
Unfortunately, some Oklahoma Republicans care more about political power than the well-being of the people.
The main thing to understand is that there is an ongoing fight inside the Republican Party between those who want to do the right thing and those who see politics as a means of accumulating and exercising power.
In other words, there are patriots and despots. Our fore fathers knew how to handle despots.
It must be pretty dark where her head is since the overwhelming evidence is that tax cuts always increase economic activity.
“Our fore fathers knew how to handle despots.”
I hate to copy the French, but I think we should uses the Guillotine as the symbol of the anti-RINO movement.
States with no income tax are clearly better off, but they have the advantage that they’ve built their entire fiscal system to rely upon the sales tax and property tax rates and revenues they have.
States with significant income taxes could move away from them only with massive budget cuts and/or massive increases in property tax and sales tax, which would be intensely disruptive and unpopular. Pretty hard to dig out of that hole.
All one needs to know is here:
http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_faq
GOP-e is controlled by big business. Big business tends to oligarchical control leading towards despotism. The author is correct that bug business is no friend to freedom. Ergo, don’t ever expect tax reform that makes your life better and freer when the democrats and GOP-e are in control.
Sales tax in times of economic downturn is much more robust and less volatile than an income tax.
Although in a recession the purchase of big ticket items such as cars, boats, new homes may slow or nearly disappear, the bulk (>90%) of consumer sales is in ordinary everyday products (e.g. toothpaste, juice, etc.); people always find a way to purchase their necessities.
But when jobs are lost incomes dive and income tax revenues bite the dust.
The reason that teachers and their unions are for income taxes and against competing for sales tax revenues is because sales tax revenues are collected from businesses selling to consumers and businesses therefore have a strong say in what those sales tax revenues should be used for (e.g. crime, road and utility improvements, zoning, sidewalks, parking, traffic stops, crosswalks, local parks, public festivities, etc.). Teacher unions must get in line behind business interests in allocation of sales tax revenues. Not so with income tax revenues.
Chambers of Commerce (COCs) are political bodies where people try to establish some sort of ‘business government’. It has no real power other than to introduce influential business people to politicians. A COC is never popular with typically successful businesses that are meeting payroll, paying expenses and making profits. A COC is typically involved in issues like lobbying for building convention centers or transit systems; in other words COCs create impetus for more taxes, something businesses don’t want. And again COCs need to stand in line behind businesses that collect retail sales taxes when it comes to having a say over how the sales tax revenues will be spent. So COCs will tend toward supporting income taxes.
And power is what the income tax is all about. In order to determine that you are paying "your fair share" of tax the government needs to know where you live, where you work, how much you make, how much you spend, what you spend on, how much you paid for your house,car, business, etc. how much you owe on these things, your interest rate, how many kids you have and where you send them to school, do you give to a local church, how much you give, ...
It goes on and on.
These two quotes from the early days of the 16th amendment debate say it all about the motives of the William Jennings Bryants and TR's that wanted the power to directly tax incomes.
"A hand from Washington will be stretched out and placed upon every man's business; the eye of the Federal inspector will be in every man's counting house . . . The law will of necessity have inquisitorial features, it will provide penalties, it will create complicated machinery. Under it men will be hailed into courts distant from their homes. Heavy fines imposed by distant and unfamiliar tribunals will constantly menace the tax payer. An army of Federal inspectors, spies and detectives will descend upon the state . . . Who of us who have had knowledge of the doings of the Federal officials in the Internal Revenue service can be blind to what will follow?" Virginia House Speaker Richard E. Byrd, 1910, predicting what would happen if a federal income tax became law.
In a December 7, 1906 message to congress, President Roosevelt showed his intentions to punish the wealthy when he urged congress urged to consider an income tax,
"It is a difficult tax to administer in its practical working, and great care would have to be exercised to see that it was not evaded by the very men whom it was most desirable to have taxed, for if so evaded it would, of course, be worse than no tax at all; as the least desirable of all taxes is the tax which bears heavily upon the honest as compared with the dishonest man."
The income tax has always been about the expansion of government power and the ability to favor some and punish others by using that power.
I knew it!
Bull Hockey! Just another business-lobby hustle for a federal sales tax! Push all business taxes off on individuals, while business guys watch their bottom lines go through the roof, people on fixed income will be eating dog food -- get lost! We've all seen this "cut MY taxes" malarkey before.
Alexander Hamilton's idea of a "fair tax" was to tax people who he thought couldn't fight back -- farmers across the Appalachians who couldn't get their crops to market and therefore distilled their surplus into whiskey and barged it down the rivers to New Orleans. Hamilton -- the Karl Rove of his day -- figured they'd be soft chumps for his play. One Whiskey Rebellion later, he looked a lot less like a policy genius and a lot more like a cheesy, opportunistic public nuisance -- which he was.
So what? You can do the same thing with any tax -- excise taxes, sales taxes, a Salt Tax ...... the Grand Gabelle was just that, a huge exercise in "policy" that eventually cost Louis XVI his head.
The French didn't have income taxes -- and yet their taxes were a cause notorious, and a stink in the nostrils of the People.
Your response shows you have no understanding of the FairTax.
Do yourself a favor, when you finish your rant, read the FAQ at the link. You should be pleasantly surprised.
Just for removing their horns, I am sure.
Any tax on income/production is evil at its core, and is strictly about power and control.
The main problem is way too few people understand that. And why.
Economists at state universities in Oklahoma stepped up to DEBUNK a particular paid-consultant’s report which claimed that eliminating the Oklahoma income tax (a source of 30) of it state and local revenues) would lead to growth in the economy. Not a single economist (not even the author of the consulting report) has defended the integrity of the ANALYSIS.
I applaud the economists in Oklahoma for calling out politicans who were trying to pass off a very poor research study as conclusive evidence.
Oklahoma and Texas have very similar levels of taxes and spending on a per capita basis. Thus, if Oklahoma wants to emulate Texas, then it should raise property and sales taxes to compensate for the lost income tax reveues (and come up with a huge port city like Houston and a long coastline to attract tourism).
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