Ending Tax Demagoguery

The argument continues in Washington over whether or not to extend the Bush tax cuts to Americans making over $250K per year. Besides maligning these earners as "the rich" and making the same tired appeal to identity politics, the Democrats' position is that extending tax cuts for this income class would leave hundreds of billions of dollars of unrealized taxable income on the table over the next decade. The Republicans' position is to block all tax increases, including those on high earners, so as not to hamper our fragile economic recovery. While this position has merit, it is receiving a lukewarm response from the public. Instead, Republicans who rode the tide of Tea Party sentiment into Washington should stand on first principles in opposing tax hikes on the minority at the behest of the majority by appealing to a sense of national unity as well as America's founding principles of "liberty and justice for all."

"The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet, there is perhaps no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party, to trample on the rules of justice."

The preservation of justice requires that all citizens be treated equally under the law and protected from the arbitrary action of government. "To break the principle of equal treatment under the law," writes Friedrich Hayek, "inevitably opens the floodgates to arbitrariness." According to Thomas Sowell, "once you buy the argument that some segment of the citizenry should lose their rights, just because they are envied or resented you are putting your own rights in jeopardy -- quite aside from undermining any moral basis for respecting anybody's rights.

Overall a good article. There are a lot of things that i could say to support it but there is one glaring error in it.

The Bush tax cuts occurred several years ago. They are the current tax law in the nation; hence they are no longer tax cuts.

By letting them expire every Congress Critter is effectively voting for a tax increase.

Remember, when you pay more it is an increase; when you pay less it is a decrease.

By using the term “Bush tax cuts” you are playing the “game” by progressive/liberal/socialist’s rules which will mean you will lose. Accurately describe the issue and do so repeatedly and the progressive/liberal/socialists will lose - see Regan's Presidency.

This is another example of Obama’s incompetence.

There are many people making decisions regarding their incomes/expenses for 2010 and they do not have an approved tax code for 2010 yet.

This is crazy and Obama needs to take responsibility for this tax mess.

The mess is not so much what the tax rate will be, but the mess is the fact Obama and the DEMOCRAT Congress have not taken action in the past 11 months.

As if Democrat action on the tax rates would have hurt them on Nov 2.

You can bet it just KILLS the Dems not to raise taxes.

Calculating the “costs” of not raising taxes on the “rich!” Such chutzpah! They have gotten to the point that they actually believe that the people’s money belongs to the government!

Somehow they need to be shown that it’s NONE OF THEIR G.D. BUSINESS how much anybody makes, so long as it is earned honestly. Greed and power hunger rule the day in D.C. and the bastards need to be put in their place, pronto.

It is obvious now that the Nov. 2 debacle didn’t do the trick-—not even close.

http://www.counterpunch.org/hudson11252010.html

???????The 2000 Republican presidential primaries saw Steve Forbes run on a plank that would be the capstone of this tax shift off wealth: a “flat tax,” one that would do away with taxing the wealthy more than blue-collar labor. Mr. Forbes was laughed out of the presidential primaries for proposing this flat tax. It was promoted as being “tax simplification.” The problem was that it is so “simple” that it falls only on employees and their employers as a wage tax.

The details are much more regressive than seem at first glance. The flat tax actually would tax wage earners much more steeply than the wealthy, whose income it would largely exempt! The flat tax is supposed to fall on employment, not returns to wealth. Employees and their employers would pay the tax, as they pay today’s 12.4 per cent FICA paycheck withholding, but the flat tax would not be levied on financial and property income.

The flat tax is supposed to be accompanied by a European-style regressive value-added tax (VAT). By taxing “value,” it essentially falls on labor – as in “the labor theory of value.” The tax does not fall on “empty” pricing in excess of value – what the classical economists termed “economic rent,” that element of price (and income) that has no counterpart in actual cost of production (ultimately reducible to labor) but is a pure free lunch: land rent, monopoly rent, interest and other financial fees, and insurance premiums. This economic rent is the major return to wealth. It is grounded in the finance, insurance and real estate (FIRE) sector.

The effect of untaxing the FIRE sector is twofold. First, it increases the power of wealth, privilege, monopoly rights and property over living labor – including the power of hereditary wealth over the living. Second, it helps “post-industrialize” the economy, creating a “service” economy. A service economy is mainly a FIRE-sector economy.

I am always conflicted on this one.The signature of many economic crisis happens when a disproportionate amount of wealth ends up in the hands of financial elite and the rest of us end up debt slaves paying economic rent with the real tax burden shifted off to the labor, wage side.???????

I remember John Kerry, the richest senator in congress when he reported his income for the presidential run only paid $11,000 in taxes. While I do not have an issue he makes a profit, I do have an issue that the tax burden is not shared equitably - I paid 5X the taxes that John Kerry did that year on probably 1/1,000th of the income. I believe this is more of a norm than the exception.

Who here really cares whether Goldman or JP Morgan default and are consigned to the dustbin of history? why should we all be taxed to death with austerity measures? Our wealth is gone and they are flying around in private Jets? How many Jobs has Goldman Sachs created with the tax savings? I do not buy the Tax argument by republicans on this.

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