Rand Paul's op-ed in today's WSJ... along with my thoughts and comments:
* * * * * *
Americans are told that they face a "fiscal
cliff" if automatic federal spending cuts and tax increases occur at the
end of the year. I'm not in favor of jumping off a cliff, but the logic of the
supposed threat needs to be questioned.
The fiscal-cliff narrative assumes that spending cuts are
bad for the economy.
MEANING... IT ASSUMES THAT LESSER DEFICITS... LESS
DEBT... IS BAD FOR THE ECONOMY. (ABSOLUTE NONSENSE! MAD HATTER ECONOMICS 101!)
It follows, then, that more spending (and therefore more
government debt) are good for the economy.
YEP... MORE NONSENSE! (GREAT MINDS THINK ALIKE! GO RAND!)
Didn't we try that with President Obama's trillion-dollar
deficit-spending spree? You remember the stimulus—the one that created or
"saved" American jobs at a cost of $400,000 per job. The one that
left the unemployment rate over 8% for 43 consecutive months, the longest span
since the Great Depression.
THE LIKES OF PAUL KRUGMAN WILL TELL YOU THAT THE PROBLEM
WAS WE DIDN'T GO MORE DEEPLY IN DEBT... RUN HIGHER DEFICITS... SPEND (AND
WASTE) MORE BORROWED MONEY! (MAD HATTER ECONOMICS 102!)
So is it good for the federal government to borrow more
and spend more, or is it good for the economy to spend less and borrow less?
These questions might need to be addressed before we wring our hands in despair
at the possible fiscal cliff.
FOLKS... THE GOP BLEW IT. ROMNEY BLEW IT. OUR CAMPAIGN
SHOULD HAVE BEEN ABOUT BALANCING SPENDING WITH REVENUES. PERIOD. INSTEAD THE
STUPID PARTY GOT SUCKERED INTO BATTLE OVER TAX GIVEAWAYS AND THEORY AS OPPOSED
TO ARGUING FOR MAJOR TAX CODE REFORM THAT PEOPLE COULD ACTUALLY COMPREHEND.
Now let's consider the assumption that raising taxes
could lead to "taxmaggedon." The implication here is that raising
taxes — that is, extracting and confiscating more income from workers and
businesses — is harmful to the economy. I am easily persuaded of this truism.
As Milton Friedman said, nobody spends someone else's money as frugally or as
wisely as they spend their own.
But if raising taxes would lead us toward trouble, why
would raising taxes only on some people ("the rich") not have some of
the same harmful effect?
Since the top 1% of income-earners pay about 40% of the
income tax, raising taxes only on the 1% still significantly increases the tax
burden on the private sector.
Any notion that it matters whom you tax is simply a
parlor game played by the class-warfare crowd. There are only two repositories
of money — the private sector (which efficiently distributes goods) and the
public sector (which doesn't distribute anything well). No central planner
possesses the omniscience to assign fairness. The only guide to fairness of
distribution that I can imagine is the minute-by-minute vote of the most
exacting and direct democracy ever known: the marketplace.
None of this is to say that we don't need government or
that government doesn't strive to do good things. It is to say that government
doesn't do anything very well, and that government should be limited — confined
to those duties that absolutely can't or won't be done by the private sector.
AND FOLKS... ABOUT THE CLASSIC REFRAIN "WHAT ABOUT
THE MILITARY?!" WELL... HOW "WELL" HAVE WE DONE WHEN WE'RE STILL
IN AFGHANISTAN 12 YEARS AFTER 9/11 AND SO IS THE TALIBAN... AND SO IS AL-QIADA...
AND... WELL... YOU GET THE IDEA.
When evaluating any government expenditure, legislators
should be forced to acknowledge the "Bridge to Nowhere," the roughly
10,000 FEMA trailers bought but never delivered to Katrina victims, and the
thousands of pounds of ice that never made it to New Orleans and required a new
contract to have someone come melt it and dispose of it.
(*SNORT*)
Apologists for big government say that we must raise
taxes, that there simply isn't enough spending to cut. Maybe these legislators
ought to look at the $100,000 that the State Department spent this year to send
comedians to spread American culture in India (part of a $600 million program).
Or the $2.6 million spent by the National Institutes of Health to teach Chinese
prostitutes to drink responsibly. Or the $947,000 spent by NASA studying what
type of food we should serve on Mars. Or the $100 billion ($115 billion last
year) that is improperly spent across the federal government each year,
according to the White House Office of Federal Financial Management.
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
Many Republicans are beginning to cave on the tax front.
Some say to hell with the Taxpayer Protection Pledge they made to voters
(drafted by Americans for Tax Reform) not to raise taxes. Some say they'll
eliminate some undeserved loopholes. But the truth remains: If taking more
money from the private sector is harmful, it doesn't matter whom you tax or
what form the revenue increase takes. Taking more money out of the private
sector is injurious to economic growth.
Where are the Republican calls for reducing revenue to
government?
I'M HERE! HERE I AM!
Where are the calls for lowering taxes?
TAX REFORM! INDEED, I ACTUALLY WANT TO RAISE TAXES ON THOSE
WHO CURRENTLY PAY NO FEDERAL INCOME TAXES! I WANT EVERYONE TO PAY "THEIR
FAIR SHARE" EVEN IF IT'S DECIDED THAT THIS "FAIR SHARE" IS ONLY
GONNA BE 1% OR 2% OR 5%.
If you want to stimulate the economy, leave more money in
the economy. When Republicans give in on this argument, we doom not only the
economy but our party as well.
AGREED... BUT... YOU CAN'T CHAMPION LEAVING MORE MONEY IN
THE ECONOMY WHILE DEFICIT SPENDING IS OVER $1 TRILLION PER YEAR... YEAR IN,
YEAR OUT DURING THE OBAMA YEARS.
Some Republicans are saying that if the tax rates expire,
taxes will go up $2 trillion, so any increase in revenue less than $2 trillion
is really a tax cut. I don't think that fuzzy Washington math will mollify the
conservative grass roots.
ONE MORE TIME: WE NEED TO ALIGN SPENDING WITH AVAILABLE
REVENUE AND THE OBJECTIVE IS TO CUT BOTH AND SHRINK THE SIZE AND SCOPE OF
GOVERNMENT.
Even for believers in wealth redistribution and big
government, the facts militate against higher tax rates. As Stephen Moore
recently pointed out on this page, in the 1920s, 1960s and again in the 1980s,
lower tax rates increased the percentage of taxes paid by the wealthy. And the
economy grew.
YEP. ABSOLUTELY TRUE.
BUT BY THE SAME TOKEN... IF MEMORY SERVES REVENUES ALSO
WENT UP AFTER THE CLINTON TAX INCREASES. (BUT I COULD BE WRONG... MY MEMORY MAY
BE FAULTY...)
Any legislator considering capitulating on the Taxpayer
Protection Pledge should remember that revenue is down now because of the
recession and slow economic growth, not because of the lower tax rates that
have been in place for almost a decade.
THAT'S TRUE! JUST LOOK AT THE FIGURES DURING BUSH'S FIRST
TERM MIDWAY THROUGH HIS SECOND TERM!
Raising revenue by increasing rates or ending deductions
won't spur the economy.
BUT ENDING DEDUCTIONS SIMPLIFIES THE TAX CODE AND MAKES
IT FAIRER... WHICH DOES ULTIMATELY SPUR ECONOMIC GROWTH!
It may even depress the meager economic growth we have
and raise less tax revenue.
THE WAY OBAMA AND THE DEMS WOULD DO IT... YEAH...
PROBABLY. THE WAY EVEN MOST RINOs WOULD DO IT... YEAH... PROBABLY. THE WAY I
WOULD DO IT? NO!
While there is no bigger believer than I am in a
balanced-budget amendment, I don't want to [simply] balance a $5 trillion
budget (which the Congressional Budget Office estimates we will have by 2020).
I want to balance a budget that is limited in scope by the Constitution and
limited in scope by the understanding that the private sector is more efficient
than the public sector.
PUT ANOTHER WAY... "IT'S THE SPENDING, STUPID!"
The Taxpayer Protection Pledge simply codifies what is
incontrovertibly true. The economy and all individuals in it thrive when we are
allowed to keep more of what we earn.
BUT ONLY IF THE BOOKS BALANCE!
If Republicans give up on that principle, we may as well
disband the party.
No comments:
Post a Comment