The trouble that Democrats and other \u201cprogressives\u201d face in selling their economic theories is that they don\u2019t seem to really believe them, themselves.<\/p>\n
Yes, at the federal level, there\u2019s hypocrisy on the topic from both major parties. But grown-ups should have questions when Democrats contend they can vastly expand the welfare state — free universal medical care like that supposedly enjoyed in the worker\u2019s paradise of Cuba, for instance — while \u201craising taxes only on the rich.\u201d<\/p>\n
Haven\u2019t we heard that one before? When the federal income tax was put into place in 1913, weren\u2019t our grandparents told it would \u201capply only to millionaires\u201d? Instead of mailing in your 1040 form next April, think you could get away with sending in a note to the IRS, saying, \u201cI\u2019m not a millionaire, so this can\u2019t apply to me?\u201d<\/p>\n
Adults working full time, trying to support a family on the minimum wage, are about as thin on the ground as unicorns. Yet Democratic\/trade union rhetoric would have us believe no harm is done — \u201cgreedy businessmen can easily afford it\u201d — by constantly raising the mandatory minimum wage, since \u201cno head of household can raise his family on $12,100 a year.\u201d<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s not significantly easier to raise a family on $13,600. So shouldn\u2019t the minimum wage really be raised to $11 an hour? Heck, why not give everyone a comfortable living and raise it to $18?<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t be ridiculous,\u201d reply the folks who moments ago were arguing that outlawing lower-paying jobs \u201ccouldn\u2019t hurt\u201d anything. \u201cWhy, if you did that, it would throw all kinds of people out of work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like Goldilocks, fans of increased taxation are constantly trying to hike government income seizures till they\u2019re \u201cjust right\u201d — which apparently means \u201cjust short of the point at which the economy would collapse.\u201d<\/p>\n
But not even the Democrats\u2019 standard bearer seems to be able to agree with himself on what that means.<\/p>\n
A year ago, campaigning for the Democratic presidential nomination, freshman Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois wanted to repeal all the Bush tax cuts, lift the cap on wages subject to the payroll tax, raise the top marginal personal income tax rate to 39.8 percent and hike the tax on capital gains and dividends from 15 percent to 25 percent. None of this, Sen. Obama insisted, would hurt the economy or anyone but \u201cthe rich.\u201d<\/p>\n
But this weekend, ABC\u2019s George Stephanopoulos asked Mr. Obama on national television: \u201cSo even if we\u2019re in a recession next January, you come into office, you\u2019ll still go through with your tax increases?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, no, no, no, no,\u201d Sen. Obama replied. \u201cWhat I\u2019ve said, George, is that even if we\u2019re still in a recession, I\u2019m going to go through with my tax cuts. That\u2019s my priority.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut not the increases?\u201d Mr. Stephanopoulos repeated.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we\u2019ve got to take a look and see where the economy is,\u201d Sen. Obama replied. \u201cThe economy is weak right now. The news with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, I think, along with the unemployment numbers indicates that we\u2019re fragile. I want to accelerate those tax cuts through a second stimulus package, get more money into the pockets of ordinary Americans, see if we can stabilize the housing market, and then we\u2019re going to have to re-evaluate at the beginning of the year to see what kind of hole we\u2019re in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why? If tax hikes can\u2019t hurt the economy — if they don\u2019t inconvenience anyone but \u201cthe rich\u201d — why delay them just because the economy is \u201cweak\u201d and \u201cfragile\u201d? If raising taxes helps the economy — great new jobs through federal solar subsidies! — why not raise taxes, ESPECIALLY in a recession? On the other hand, if raising taxes hurts the economy, why do it ever?<\/p>\n
There are three possibilities. First, Sen. Obama was just PRETENDING to be a \u201csoak-the-rich\u201d progressive last year (and throughout his political career to date), running to the left of Hillary Clinton to win the nomination of a party dominated by government unions. Second, it\u2019s possible we saw the real Barack Obama last year, that he\u2019s instead decided to spend 60 days this fall pretending to be concerned about not wrecking the economy in order to avert economic panic and win the general election — at which point he\u2019ll revert to the Marxist principles he learned at the knees of his mentors, Frank Marshall Davis and Saul \u201cThe Red\u201d Alinsky.<\/p>\n
Or, most likely, Democrats and other \u201cprogressives\u201d cheer each other on as they spout the politically correct, redistributionist rhetoric they learned from their leftist college professors, though they do harbor a strong suspicion that they could quickly cripple the economy if allowed to actually put their own rhetoric into effect.<\/p>\n
Which leaves them trying to sell something even they don\u2019t believe in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The trouble that Democrats and other \u201cprogressives\u201d face in selling their economic theories is that they don\u2019t seem to really believe them, themselves. Yes, at the federal level, there\u2019s hypocrisy on the topic from both major parties. But grown-ups should have questions when Democrats contend they can vastly expand the welfare state — free universal […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[18,5,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-elections","category-taxation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-1J","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}