Dean's dream-destroying plan. (Calculate Your Howard Dean Pay Cut.)

The Washington Times ^ | 23 Oct 03 | Not Provided

[.cnI redruM]

In a recent speech at Georgetown University, Howard Dean unveiled his economic plan, calling it "Reclaiming the American Dream." Since its centerpiece is a complete repeal of the Bush tax cuts, the plan amounts to a gigantic tax increase. And let there be no mistake: Mr. Dean's claims to the contrary, "Reclaiming the American Dream" will result in a huge tax increase on child-rearing working families. How ironic it is that one of Mr. Dean's "clear objectives" is to "[r]elieve the crushing burdens on American families." Contrary to the details of his schemes, he also claims his program "will strive for greater tax fairness for middle-class working families."

[GO65]

And then you have the political question of the role of government in society, and whether or not maximizing government tax revenue is a good thing. For example, from a human freedom point of view, starving the government is always a good idea. The fewer resources they have, the less trouble they can cause.

I have to disagree with you there. Starving the government is not always a good idea, as we saw in the U.S. during the late 1800's/early 1900's when a few industrial giants were able to dominate the economy, and impose harsh working conditions on their employees.

As you succinctly stated in your discussion on tax policy, at some point on the curve there is a point of optimization. We, as Americans, have spent the last 200+ years debating where that point lies. :-)

[HenryLeeII]

Right...if you were to create 1 million new government jobs at $50,000 each, that would cost only half as much as Dean's proposal.

You seem to have forgotten the $852,347.27 overhead per government job, plus benefits.

[gridlock]

And so the debate goes on. I would argue that we are on the negative part of the rather harder to define government benefit/government cost slope, and that reductions in government expenditure in this part of the regime are a good thing.

Obviously, as before, if government expenditures are reduced from 1% of GDP to .5% of GDP it does not matter, since government activity is an insignificant part of the market, and the tax money saved is an insignificant part of the money supply.

But it's been a looooong time since we've visited that part of the curve. So I would amend my statement that starving the government is not necessarily always a good idea, but has been a good idea for the last fifty years or so.