Posted on 12/16/2017 8:20:08 AM PST by Kaslin
The “Prince of Darkness,” a.k.a. Bob Novak, the late columnist, once opined that: “God put the Republican Party on earth to cut taxes. If they don't do that, they have no useful function.” Pat Buchanan, another “right-wing” columnist, took issue with Novak’s view of the GOP in “Why God Created the GOP” and opined that “to be historically precise, the GOP was not put here to cut taxes. From infancy in the 1850s, its mission was to halt the spread of slavery.”
Buchanan then launched into an elegant little history of taxes under Republicans from 1865 to 2012 that, given the current push to cut income taxes, is quite worth reading. The article pretty much refutes Novak’s claim. Maybe Novak was just being overly broad, “talking big” to make a point. In any event, I miss old Bob; he was an old-school gentleman, despite being the Prince of Darkness and all.
One can understand why Mr. Novak might have had such a reductive opinion of the GOP, as he began his career in journalism in the 1950s, when the personal income tax had a top marginal rate of 91 percent. During Novak’s life, the top rate ranged from 94 to 28 percent. But how would such different rates affect revenue? Did the IRS reap three times the revenue when the top rate was three times higher? In “The Good Ol' Days: When Tax Rates Were 90 Percent” at the Mises Institute, Andrew Syrios provides an answer:
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
I think that for a lot of conservatives, it’snot so much the tax rate as what the taxes are used for.
Military strength, infrastructure investment that facilitates commerce and some of the core scientific research that is just too big and too long-term for most other entities to undertake (and that other nations are undertaking thus we fall behind at our peril), these things I do not mind paying taxes for.
Grants for LGBT studies, foreign aid, welfare for visa lottery winners and anchor babies and conferences on globull warming, THAT I mind paying for.
>>“to be historically precise, the GOP was not put here to cut taxes. From infancy in the 1850s, its mission was to halt the spread of slavery.”
Taxes to fund the basic purpose of government are necessary. Taxes to provide payments to people who did not earn the money through their own labor are SLAVERY.
There is very little difference between a person who puts a gun to my head and orders me to work in his factory for his gain and a government agent who points a gun at my head and orders me to give up a sizable portion of the money I earned by voluntarily working in a factory and then using it to buy votes.
Taxes are used to subjugate certain groups, reward others and give politicians something to talk about when they are not talking about themselves. Actually they are supposed to be the price of civilization. Hah!
And I think that there needs to be explicit understanding in the country and culture about the possible purposes of taxes: to obtain revenue or to redistribute wealth.
That’s the advantage of a flat tax, it is NOT redistributive, except in the sense that perhaps some of the taxes from very wealthy or very poor folks will go to the mostly middle-class people who build roads and weapons.
Idiotic article.
If you want to cause economic contraction, an excellent way to do it is to tell people they are going to get a tax cut next year, or the year after.
That’s why the Democrats insisted on delaying Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts. They wanted the Carter recession to worsen through 1982.
Cutting taxes is halting the spread of slavery.
I am of the opinion that the federal government should not be taxing individuals. It should be taxing the states. That would then leave the states free to raise taxes to meet their federal obligation by what ever means or mix of tax revenue.
I’m with Novak, the author sounds like a wuss who’s afraid of democrat class warfare.
Starve the beast!
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