Sunday, September 07, 2003
(7:33 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Raise Taxes!
States are facing huge budget gaps and are being "forced" to cut services. Here's an idea: raise taxes, dumbass.
The federal government is facing record deficits as the costs of war in Iraq mount, and a new prescription drug entitlement has no obvious source of funding. Here's an idea: raise taxes, moron.
I don't especially want to pay more taxes, but I'd be willing to do so if that's what it took. More to the point, those who have benefitted most extravagantly from our nation's great prosperity (commonly called "the rich") should be willing to pay much higher taxes than they already pay. They would still have plenty of money left over for their mansions or their fancy dinners or just to store in the good ol' money bin.
But won't raising taxes hurt the economy? Oh, I don't know. I know that cutting taxes doesn't appear to have helped a whole lot, so it seems like we have nothing to lose by putting them back up to pre-Bush-Jr. levels. In fact, since cutting taxes only led to an ambiguous "jobless recovery," maybe we could actually raise them even higher, so that the government could hire people. Then more people would have jobs, and they'd buy stuff, and on and on.
Life would be so much better if those politicians would grow some balls and just raise taxes! I mean, come on!
But honestly, why is it that we can't even talk about raising taxes lately? Why is that not even a possibility? I mean, you're considered a Stalinist if you don't actively support cutting taxes. When the government doesn't have enough money to do what it needs to do, the obvious, common sense approach to remedying that problem should be to raise taxes.
As for the idea that cutting taxes increases revenue: just shut the hell up if you believe that. You should just never talk again if you bought that lie. Seriously. Either that, or start buying stock in my web site.
