All statists want much bigger government, but not all of them are honest about how to finance a Greek-sized welfare state.
The President, for instance, wants us to believe that the rich are some sort of fiscal pinata, capable of generating endless amounts of tax revenue.
Using IRS tax data, I’ve shown that this is a very inaccurate assumption. And I’ve also used IRS data to show the President that there are big Laffer-Curve effects when you try to rape and pillage high-income Americans.
Heck, even the Europeans have realized that you can only squeeze so much blood from that stone.
Notwithstanding the misleading rhetoric from the Obama Administration, there are some honest folks on the left who understand and acknowledge that you can’t have bigger government unless you put ordinary people on the chopping block.
- The New York Times endorsed higher taxes on the middle class in 2010.
- The then-House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer also gave a green light that year to higher taxes on the middle class.
In 2012, MIT professor and former IMF official Simon Johnson argued that the middle class should pay more tax.
- The Washington Post also called for higher taxes on the middle class last year, as did Vice President Joe Biden’s former economist.
- A New York Times columnist also called for broad-based tax hikes on the middle class tin 2012.
- Last year, a Senior Fellow from Demos argued for higher taxes on all Americans, specifically middle class.
The New York Times seems really fixated on screwing Joe Lunchbucket. Here are some excerpts from an editorial in today’s paper.
…new taxes on high-income Americans are a matter of necessity and fairness; they are also a necessary precondition to what in time will have to be tax increases on the middle class. …As the economy strengthens and the population ages, more taxes will be needed from further down the income scale… But there will never be a consensus for more taxes from the middle class without imposing higher taxes on wealthy Americans, who have enjoyed low taxes for a long time.
What’s particularly interesting about this editorial is that the New York Times is very explicit about political strategy. They support more class-warfare taxes in order to set the stage for higher taxes on the middle class.
We can’t say we haven’t been warned.