Posted on 11/30/2010 7:46:09 PM PST by Al B.
In “America By Heart” folks will get a feel for some of my favorite writers and thinkers. One of them is the great economist Thomas Sowell. Some of you may recall that in “Going Rogue” I mentioned Sowell’s famous book “A Conflict of Visions” to explain the way the liberal or “progressive” world view and philosophy differs from the conservative view. Sowell’s articles are always worth reading, and his most recent column is no exception. He reminds us where our attention needs to be during this lame-duck session of Congress. He notes that the Democrats have articulated their tired class warfare argument about “tax cuts for the rich,” but conservatives have still not articulated our proven time-tested argument that tax cuts spur economic growth, which in turn helps everyone from all income levels and increases tax revenue as the economy grows. Sowell reminds us:
“These are not new arguments on either side. They go back more than 80 years. Over that long span of time, there have been many sharp cuts in tax rates under presidents Calvin Coolidge, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush. So we don’t need to argue in a vacuum. There is a track record.
“What does that record say? It says, loud and clear, that cuts in tax rates do not mean cuts in tax revenues. In all four of these administrations, of both parties, so-called “tax cuts for the rich” led to increased tax revenues — with people earning high incomes paying not only a larger sum total of tax revenues, but even a higher proportion of all tax revenues.
“Most important of all, these tax-rate reductions spurred economic activity, which we definitely need today.”
But as Sowell later points out, having a proven time-tested policy isn’t enough if we don’t articulate it. We need to remind people that tax cuts help everyone. And we should also remind the Democrats that many of the so-called “rich” they’re dismissing are our small business owners who account for 70% of all job creation in this country. At a time when we need job growth, we should not target job creators with tax hikes. Closing our deficit gap requires us to cut spending, but we also need to spur economic growth. With that in mind, the last thing we should do is hamper our economic innovators and entrepreneurs with excessive taxes, overly burdensome regulation, and more uncertainty. This is not a difficult argument to make. It’s common sense.
- Sarah Palin
No, excessive spending caused the deficits. The tax cuts led to increased revenues, and in the case of the Bush cuts I believe they led to the highest total revenue in a single year in our nation's history. Yet under Reagan and Bush both, despite the record income, we ran up huge deficits because expenses exceeded income by a considerable amount. So you can increase your income by any percentageyou care to name and credit whatever you want for it. But if your expenses increase even more then you're still in the hole.
Will extending the tax cuts increase revenue? Probably not, not in the short term. After all we're not talking about new cuts but extending existing ones and we're running a huge deficit with rates as low as they are. Extending them won't make things worse and may help long term. But they aren't a solution for our current fiscal mess.
Certainly not the whole solution, we need massive slashing of federal government and probably some legislation to let some states renege on their union/pension obligations, too.
But I think the difference between extending or making permanent the Bush tax cuts and letting them expire would be huge. To jack up taxes in the next four weeks would be an a killer for our invalid of an economy.
But to make the whole thing merely extending tax cuts is simplistic in the extreme. We should be advocating a package of tax cuts and spending cuts.
The reality is that the tax cuts are pressing in this lame-duck congress—by which major spending cuts aren’t going to be approved or signed by Obama.
Neither will the tax cuts. We all know that this is going to be a political football for both sides. The Democrats will make a big production out damanding the GOP explain how the tax cuts will be 'paid for'. The media will trumpet how the GOP would rather screw the middle class and unemployed than give up tax cuts for the wealthy. The GOP has carved their line in the sand and cannot compromise with Obama on this. It's a question of who will cave first.
Are your parents looking to adopt? LOL!
Dad bought me a Sarah Palin Calendar last year. I’ve never seen him so in love...and that’s saying a lot because my Mom is a ‘looker’ and as Conservative as they come!
I thoroughly enjoyed my time alone in bed last night with Dr. Sowell, LOL!
She's been pro-growth since before she hit the national stage.
If only her Washington repub brothers would drop the austerity/cuts paradigm and join her in the Reagan optimism corner.
No repub should vote for the evil sales or gas taxes from the so-called deficit reduction panel.
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