"There’s no doubt that Obama’s higher tax rates would mean weaker incentives to work, take risks and innovate; and stronger incentives to waste time and effort on avoiding the tax man.
But those bad effects must be weighed against a good one: Higher tax rates mean a lower budget deficit."
Lunacy.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/07/AR2008090701950.html
Interesting, so he doesn’t consider someone paying 37.9% of their income as sacrificing anything?
Additionally, he failed to realize the contradiction in his own argument. He states that higher taxes will result in less risk taking, less innovation, and more effort to avoid paying taxes. Hence, tax revenues would fall. Then, in the next sentence, he implies that tax revenues would increase because of higher taxes. So revenues would increase and decrease at the same time. Only in the mind of socialists.
I don’t get it. If budget deficit is the problem why not do what every single private company (except those sporting good government connections, of course) does, namely cutting expenses? Or is the thought of the State spending less so abhorrent that it must not be even mentioned? This is something I’ve noticed all over the world: a lot of talk about reducing deficits (every single country is bankrupt, every single one) but when it comes to how this deficit can be reduced it’s always about raising taxes and “increasing efficiency”, which in reality means retaining every single bureaucrat and forcing the peones to either pay more for the same sub-standard “services” or to make do with less (this usually starts with allowing roads to fall into disrepair… the car is an instrument of Beelzebub made in the Tartarus to murder cuddly polar bears, you know) while keeping the same prices.
Nothing new under the September sun.
I think an important thing to remember is that a lot of times states dont typically just borrow money from another country. Very much of the borrowing between states(countries) takes place with one state buying government treasuries of another state. It is not as though China just sends us cash, because that is counterintuitive.
Sebastian Mallaby is one of the podcasters at the council on foreign relations website, no suprise
Maybe we could sacrifice expensive and useless government programs?
Don’t be silly, the government wouldn’t waste our money on useless programs.
That was one of my first thoughts when I read the article: No mention whatsoever of reducing spending.
^ Damn, I forgot to obey our omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent politicians and bureaucrats.