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Saturday, February 09, 2008
The Silly Notion of Taxes
Non-baseball party. Enter at your peril, avoid at your pleasure.
How would anyone, including the candidates for POTUS, and other politicians, know whether it is “correct” to lower or raise taxes, or leave them exactly as they are. (Let’s leave the tax structure out of the picture. I am talking only about total federal tax revenue.)
And, does the answer completely depend upon your perspective, and there is no “correct” or “incorrect answer?”
The reason I ask of course, is that the CW is that Republicans and conservatives are for lowering taxes (or at least keeping the “Bush tax cuts") and the Dems and liberals are for the opposite (or so the former says).
How do the Repubs know that taxes are too high now as compared to any other time (in past years, they - at least the rates - have been much higher of course, although there were many more so-called “loopholes” I assume), and if taxes are lowered now, does that mean that next year or in 4 years, Repubs will no longer be trumpeting, “Lower taxes?” Or does that song never end.
Can a candidate ever say to the American people, “I think that taxes are too low. We need to raise them. Vote for me!” What if taxes ARE too low? There has to be a point at which taxes are too low, right? They can’t always be too high, can they?
If a thousand intelligent people looked in detail at the federal budget (impossible of course), would they have a thousand opinions about what should be cut and what should be added and therefore what the total tax revenue needs to be? Would any one be more right than another?
How much money is enough for the federal government to spend on hunger, disease, aid to foregin countries, educations, etc.? I don’t think there is an answer to that, so how much money should be budgeted for those things and hence what should the total tax revenue be?
If you asked a thouand people about what kind of tax structure we should have (flat, sales, etc.), even if they all agreed on the total tax revenue we needed, wouldn’t they all have different answers? Would any one be more right than another?
Can’t any politician cut taxes or say he is going to cut taxes, let the deficit rise (we can always borrow to cover our expenses), and then let the next generation worry about that? Isn’t that the “correct” thing for a politician to do (at least as far as getting elected), unless he is really intelligent, honest, and responsible?