Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Bartlett: Raise Taxes on the Rich

Bruce Bartlett, who worked for Ron Paul during his first term, then worked in the Reagan and Bush Administrations at Treasury, and who worked closely with Cato, has gone completely to the dark side.

He uses his NYT column to support Warren Buffett's call for more taxes on the rich and even writes:
It is not class warfare to suggest that the richest 1 percent of people in society pay one-third of their income to the federal government...

The issue is not whether the rich should pay more, but how best to accomplish it.
"The rich" certainly sounds like a class to me. Moreover, taxing the rich is very destructive, since the rich are the ones who do the most saving/investing which provides the capital to create consumer goods. Do we really want to increases taxes on those who put money into cell phone manufacturing, new restaurants and new medical equipment? Taxing the rich is really insane policy.

9 comments:

  1. Yes, but BB is not longer stuck writing about GOLD in Reason.

    http://www.flickr.com/photos/bob_roddis/4161210353/in/set-72157600951970959

    He's now writing for the NYT and he's now considered a sage by the hipster smart set. I guess that makes it all worthwhile.

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  2. This tax-war should be called out.

    The choice is really between having rich people spend their money wherever they want to spend it or giving it to bureaucrats to spend it on pointless make-work and politicking.

    Let's see.

    Rich people spend their own stuff, here's who gets the money:

    1. Restaurants (jobs for waiters and cooks, sales taxes paid to gov)

    2. Upwardly mobile Lawyers (they spend it on their kids ballet classes, art classes, SAT prep, and all those extras; more contributions for the Dems, since lawyers are one of their big constituencies; more buying of cheap properties as investments, holding up the housing market)

    3. CPA's : ditto,

    4. Doctors: ditto, with money now going to support the charitable stuff doctors seem to do for their poorer patients- medical missions supported by extra work rich doctors do for publicity...nurses get employment...medical manufacturers get money...sales people for manufacturers get bonuses..

    5. Patients spend on medicine, which send money to the pharmacies, drug companies and their employees.

    6. Investment properties hold up housing market from abyss, encourage people to start buying and fixing up..realtors and workers make money..

    5. Yachts and sailing - boat manufacturers get money, cabin boys, marketing people selling events, tourism and hotel businesses make money.

    6. Jewelry - jewelers and magazines make money, mines make money, mineworkers make money, investors make money from mining companies.

    7. Banks - cash in the bank creates reserves, helps bank make loans to businesses that need them; props up other people's checking accounts
    Whole flock of middle-class bank employees get salaries

    8. Investments - stock brokers make money selling rich people investments. Clever Wall street sharks make money selling them dumb investments. Dreamers get to try their dumb schemes using someone else's money.
    Unemployable people get employed briefly while dumb schemes stay afloat. Lawyers get employment when dumb schemes fall apart. FBI and SEC get employment when investors in dumb schemes demand investigations. Matt Taibbi and others make careers while exposing said dumb schemes. Magazines make money running Taibbi articles exposing government not investigating dumb schemes run by Wall street sharks defrauding dumb rich (and not rich) people.

    Bloggers get hits linking to said articles and monetize blogs via said articles. Google makes money off monetized blogs. Businesses make money off google ads...

    Businesses use google revenues to employ people..

    People eat...

    And that is the house that Jack could build if Warren would get out of the way.

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  3. And it's a lie anyway. They always end up taxing the middle class.

    Self-inflicted pain, IMHO.

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  4. These assholes do not speak for me. What kills me about these jerks is that they are not taxing millionaires and billionaires, they are mostly taxing thousandaires like me. I already pay plenty of taxes (over $1mil in the last six years) and I refuse to absorb any more. I will do what ever I have to do to pass on these increases like putting off capital investments, cutting nice but unnecessary expenses and off shoring more labor. I guess you could say that I am tired of paying Warren Buffet's share of income taxes!

    There is one condition under which I would be willing pay more taxes and absorb the entire hit...if people like Warren Buffet tax their entire gross income, regardless of nature (Dividends, gains, interest, wages, tax exempt interest, retirement payments) at the highest marginal rates. I would pay good money to see Buffet's face if he had to pay taxes at the rare I do.

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  5. Taxing anyone is a really insane policy.

    Of course it's easy for me, and most of the readers here, to see through the charade of increasing taxes on anyone making $1 million-$10 million under the temporal auspices of taxing the "rich". At the rate Benny boy is printing dollars, in <5 years $1 million won't be rich anymore. and the middle class will still be stuck with a ridiculously high tax rate.

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  6. @Lila,

    Back in the eighties, the system you describe was cursed with the neutral, then pejorative, title of "trickle-down economics". What a shame. I wish that they had used the term "wealth distribution" or some such.
    I also hate it when pundits conflate "government economy" and "the nation's economy" Very different things as we know.

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  7. @Capn Mike

    It's not trickle-down economics. It's cascading-down prosperity.

    Cut taxes to one flat rate - 10 % or just stick people with user fees.

    Fairer all around.

    Don't pay the banksters the bail out money.
    Cut the military and intel budget seriously. Sell physical assets. Honor all other obligations.

    Then get rid of contingency fees for lawyers.
    When the legal industry is starved of business, business will come back here. It isn't just lower taxes.

    It's regulation and litigation that's keeping businesses out

    And yes, deliberately favor educated skilled, wealthy people trying to immigrate or invest or work or start businesses in the US. Stop making it hard for them.

    Let our CEOs get some competition. Their salaries will fall and their productivity will increase.

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  8. Let's tax the poor...They are the ones who vote for these political terrorists.

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  9. Actually Anon 2:00pm, if a country is going to finance its operations from an income tax as we do, then everyone should be required to pay, even if its only a few bucks out of an entitlement check. Likewise, if the government desires to spend more/less money the rates should rise/fall across the board by the amt necessary. This way everyone feels the cost of their government and everyone cares.

    The insanity of the trending tax policy since Reagan is that it is putting the tax burden in fewer and fewer hands. Anyone that has ever run a business knows that you want to have the broadest revenue base as possible to protect you from declines in certain market segments. Having so few people footing the bill of operating government makes the government extremely dependent on high income earners to not only do well but to grow their incomes so that tax revenue can keep up with spending growth. All I can say is government better hope income keeps flowing to the top for the sake of its financial health.

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