At Stumbling on the Truth Cliff Asness points to the opportunities Trump missed at the first debate in Businessman, Defend Thyself:

Let’s start with Clinton’s claim that she’s going to pay for her laundry list of Bernie-Sanders-inspired new benefits by simply, in her words, “having the wealthy pay their fair share and close the corporate loopholes.” We certainly can debate what everyone’s “fair share” really should be. But Trump missed the chance to demonstrate the multiple mendacities, direct and implied, in her statement. Most important, he didn’t point out that the countries Clinton and Sanders admire pay for the “life of Denmark” (reminiscent of the Obama administration’s famous “life of Julia”) with far more regressive taxes, looking at the relevant total share of taxes paid, not just marginal tax rates on the “rich,” than here in the U.S.A. Honest liberal pundits have pointed out that to achieve the state with the size and scope desired by progressives, they will have to tax everyonemuch more, particularly the middle class. No matter what you think about the “fair share” that the rich should pay, no serious person thinks taxing the wealthy alone will pay for a Scandinavian-style welfare state. Purely adding to the tax burden of the rich has never worked at this scale, mainly because there aren’t enough rich people to tax (there’s a reason we call them the 1 percent or even the 0.01 percent). The middle class, on the other hand, are legion and easily taxed.

HKO

As a friend observed, The Democrats can not do math. For the left there is never enough.  There is no tax increase that is not immediately followed by a call for further increases.

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