![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
George Will on tax plans
In the National Review, George Will complains about the Republican tax plans on unusual grounds: what's wrong with the plan is that it causes fewer (low-income) people to pay income taxes at all, and therefore reduces the number of people who have a vested interest in cutting income taxes. (The fact that most of them still pay payroll taxes, and that most people don't really care about the distinction between the two, seems irrelevant to him.) To be precise,
Likewise, he objects to deficit spending not for the usual Republican reasons that it causes inflation and high interest rates, but rather because
His abhorrence of deficit spending doesn't imply raising taxes on anybody but the poor, of course: in fact, he adds that
In other words, he takes it as axiomatic that "restraining the growth of government" -- or, even better, shrinking government -- is a desirable goal in itself. The Republican tax plans increase personal and child exemptions, thus increasing the number of people who pay no income tax, thus decreasing political support for cutting taxes. If only poor people suffered from paying income taxes as much as rich people do, the reasoning goes, they would join hands with rich people in a unified effort to shrink the government. I suppose, by the same reasoning, if only government stopped helping poor people, they would realize that government doesn't help people and all Americans would come together in a kumbaya moment of dismantling it. Then, with a suitably stripped-down government, rich and poor can march arm-in-arm into a golden future in which the rich can do whatever they want to the poor, unrestrained by government regulation or redistribution.
It's analogous to saying we should poison the town well so people realize that water is bad for them so they stop drinking it; let them drink Champagne.
an already large — and, if the Republican bill passes, soon to be larger — American majority has a vanishingly small incentive to restrain the growth of a government that they are not paying for through its largest revenue source.
Likewise, he objects to deficit spending not for the usual Republican reasons that it causes inflation and high interest rates, but rather because
Deficits make big government cheap, enabling the political class to charge taxpayers rather less than $1 for every $1 of government benefits dispensed.
His abhorrence of deficit spending doesn't imply raising taxes on anybody but the poor, of course: in fact, he adds that
the Republican bill’s [20%] corporate tax rate is 20 points too high.
In other words, he takes it as axiomatic that "restraining the growth of government" -- or, even better, shrinking government -- is a desirable goal in itself. The Republican tax plans increase personal and child exemptions, thus increasing the number of people who pay no income tax, thus decreasing political support for cutting taxes. If only poor people suffered from paying income taxes as much as rich people do, the reasoning goes, they would join hands with rich people in a unified effort to shrink the government. I suppose, by the same reasoning, if only government stopped helping poor people, they would realize that government doesn't help people and all Americans would come together in a kumbaya moment of dismantling it. Then, with a suitably stripped-down government, rich and poor can march arm-in-arm into a golden future in which the rich can do whatever they want to the poor, unrestrained by government regulation or redistribution.
It's analogous to saying we should poison the town well so people realize that water is bad for them so they stop drinking it; let them drink Champagne.
no subject
In addition, actual human beings have a geographic location at any given time. Corporations don't: they can and do declare themselves to be wherever they'll be taxed the least, regardless of whether it's a nice place to live or work. And actual human beings can be locked up in jail for serious violations of the law; corporations can't.
So our tax system would certainly be simpler and easier to analyze if there were no corporate taxes at all, and income was taxed only when it came into the possession of a human being. Senator Ron Johnson sorta goes there in saying not only that the Senate bill is insufficiently generous to pass-through businesses (in that they get a smaller tax cut than big corporations), but that all businesses should be pass-through businesses.
This would of course mean a lot of money washing around from corporation to corporation without ever being taxed. That's not self-evidently a bad thing, as long as all income falling into individual hands actually gets taxed (ideally at a rate independent of its source, whether wages, rent, royalties, capital gains, inheritance, etc.) Employers would get around taxes by giving their employees "free" food, lodging, travel, use of company vehicles, etc. in lieu of taxable salary (I speak as someone whose employer is famous for its "free" food). What else would go wrong? Discuss.