Tax Cut Fever.. Catch it Soon
Congress just approved some tax cuts. Rudy Giluiani wants a big tax cut. John McCain now supports tax cuts he used to oppose. Tax cuts are the patent medicine of our political culture. They can solve every financial crisis and can ward off evil bacteria in a healthy economy. Even Democrats are buying tax cuts by the case.
Bunk um. Despite all the supply side hoohy surrounding them, there is no evidence that tax cuts increase federal revenues, stimulate the economy or produce anything that even looks like the Laffer curve. (Although a fat lot of money has been spent making sure that Americans believe all these things to be true.) Moreover, a reliance on tax cuts essentially mortgages our future and allows our current level of mediocre government to continue. For example:
From whence did the tax cut fever come? Perhaps the attraction of tax cuts is that they allow us to ignore all those other problems. Perhaps, in our uniquely American way, we are convinced that we can solve our problems by contributing less to the common good and buying an X box instead. Whatever the rationale, we need to ramp up a real economic policy or we will be faced with a country mortgaged to the hilt and a government too weak to do anything about it. I credit Mike Huckabee for being the only candidate on the GOP side to yell "shennanigans."
Bunk um. Despite all the supply side hoohy surrounding them, there is no evidence that tax cuts increase federal revenues, stimulate the economy or produce anything that even looks like the Laffer curve. (Although a fat lot of money has been spent making sure that Americans believe all these things to be true.) Moreover, a reliance on tax cuts essentially mortgages our future and allows our current level of mediocre government to continue. For example:
Tax cuts will not repair our roads, ports, or air transportation infrastructure.
Tax cuts will not get us a world class public education system or even a third world class national healthcare program.
Tax cuts will not ameliorate our growing national debt, the principal of which enriches foreign governments and the interest on which grows to be a larger portion of the federal budget each year.
Tax cuts only attract the lobbyists that already infect our political system.
Tax cuts will not give us a federal government that can respond robustly to real crises like hurricanes, earthquakes or disease. Tax cuts just make our government weaker and less nimble.
Tax cuts will not help our current over concentartion of wealth. In fact, tax policy has been one of the prime instruments the GOP has used to create the massive wealth inequality we now face.
From whence did the tax cut fever come? Perhaps the attraction of tax cuts is that they allow us to ignore all those other problems. Perhaps, in our uniquely American way, we are convinced that we can solve our problems by contributing less to the common good and buying an X box instead. Whatever the rationale, we need to ramp up a real economic policy or we will be faced with a country mortgaged to the hilt and a government too weak to do anything about it. I credit Mike Huckabee for being the only candidate on the GOP side to yell "shennanigans."
posted by Jack Reed at 11:38 AM
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