Originally published June 25 2005
Columnist says both Democrats and Republicans oppose or support taxes without thinking
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Bruce Bartlett, a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis, says that the problem with both sides of the taxation debate is that Democrats accept every tax hike without thinking, and Republicans reject every tax hike without thinking about the underlying issues.
Assuming taxes must be raised somehow, taxing cosmetic surgery seemed a pretty good idea to me -- the tax is essentially voluntary and falls mainly on the well-to-do.
It occurred to me conservatives have increasingly become just like liberals on tax policy in an important philosophical way.
We wanted to cut taxes, of course, but we were just as concerned about the tax structure as we were about the level of taxation.
Our goal was to cut marginal tax rates because we firmly believed this would provide the greatest economic boost to the economy.
And we knew other types of tax cuts would lack economic benefit but could be economically harmful.
Both caused economic activity to deviate from what would exist in a free market, thus creating inefficiency and reducing growth.
At that time, most economists followed Keynesian economics, which said the only way taxes affected growth was through their effect on disposable income.
Consequently, to Keynesians, a 20 percent tax rate and a 100 percent tax rate with an 80 percent rebate would have exactly the same economic effects.
Because they saw the world this way, Keynesians saw no particular benefit in cutting tax rates even when they went as high as 91 percent, as they did in the 1950s.
If the government wanted to stimulate growth, it would make more sense to raise government spending.
For this reason, some liberal economists actively opposed the Kennedy tax cut in 1963.
We should strive for a tax system that taxes least those factors that can most easily escape taxation and taxes most heavily those factors least able to escape taxation.
In short, the Republican tax cuts of the last four years have effectively taken fundamental tax reform off the table for good.
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