“In 1936, after FDR helped raise the top income-tax bracket to 79 percent, the revenue collected from income taxes dropped to $674 million, as rich investors withdrew their capital from taxable investments. The excise taxes, which hit the middle- and lower-income groups with full force, were over $1.5 billion. These new excise taxes, much more than income taxes, were helping fund the New Deal programs.”
Read MoreThis is the biggest lie perpetuated from the left; that our vast social spending can be funded by only taxing the wealthiest 1%. The math just does not work. As Thatcher so famously noted, “You eventually run out of other people’s money.”
Read MoreWhen you rob Peter to pay Paul you can always count on Paul’s approval, but you cannot count on Peter to remain cooperative. Peter has options.
Read MoreOur biggest challenge is an endless appetite for government spending and an unwillingness and inability to raise taxes enough to support it. The idea that infinite spending can be supported by a small percentage of taxpayer defies basic math and principles of human action. This has caused record deficits and a belief that deficits do not matter and that tradeoffs are no longer required.
Read MoreWhen you rob Peter to pay Paul you can count on Paul’s approval, but you can also count on Peter moving to another more friendly place. When you try to build a wall to keep Peter in, you also discourage Peters from moving here, and you encourage young and enterprising Peters to move away BEFORE they become wealthy enough to be worth robbing.
Warren’s policy is as destructive of our long term financial health as any policy we can imagine.
Read MoreWarren uses ‘rich people’ as a scapegoat in the same way the classical bigots of history used religious and ethnic vulnerable minorities and the ‘others’. It is a form of intellectual bigotry and is clouded in the same lethal combination of ignorance and dishonesty.
Read More“Because Sweden is well-governed, it treats its tax regime as a question of revenue rather than a question of so-called social justice…”
Read MoreThe data counters the false refrain of the Trump cuts only benefiting the rich. While I have repeated this refrain for years, the actual tax rates matter more than the statutory rates. The difference is the Special Interest Spread- SIS- a term I coined in this article: Save the Swamp.
Read MoreIf you prioritize economic growth over social spending, you will have a great measure of both: if you prioritize social spending over growth you will have less of both.
Read MoreThe contest between the sales tax and the property tax obscures the true problem: a government that spends too much and tries to hide from its responsibilities with these shell games.
Read MoreMany small businesses that ship online will be hurt by this ruling. Complying with the tax codes for 48 states that charge sales tax will be crippling for many of them. There will be a need for a third party to manage the sales tax issue for thousands of small online businesses. This will likely serve to make Amazon and other large online retailers bigger and more powerful in the internet sales arena.
Read MoreWhat DT is risking is not just some political points in the rust belt and trade promises. When this trade war ends like all the rest do, and the economy takes a hit- it will not be his stupid trade polices that are blamed, it will be his ‘stupid’ tax cuts.
Read Moreby Henry Oliner
The estate tax is less of a transfer from the rich to the poor than it is a transfer from one group of wealthy to other wealthy special interests. The great beneficiaries of estate taxes are tax lawyers and accountants, insurance companies, and wealthier businesses who use the pressure of the estate taxes to acquire other firms and grow larger.
From Kevin Williamson at National Review, A Conservative Tax Hike The federal government uses the tax code for all sorts of social-engineering purposes: to encourage and subsidize investment in manufacturing or green-energy businesses, to reward charitable giving, to encourage home-ownership. The
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