Passage of the Day: Mark Goldblatt

At National Review, Mr. Goldblatt skewers the last leg of the objection to supply-side tax cuts (HT Brain Shavings):

“Yes,” liberals object, “but cutting taxes for rich people means that the income gap between, on the one hand, rich people and, on the other hand, middle-class and poor people, gets wider.”

Well boo-freakin’-hoo.

What difference does that income gap make in the real lives of the middle class or the poor? Are rich people hording baby formula in their custom-designed pantries? Are they pumping life-saving vaccines into their poodles? Are they driving up the price of yachts that middle class and poor people would otherwise be buying? Wealth is not a zero-sum game. If Bill Gates has $100 billion in assets, that doesn’t mean 100 exceptionally poor people must each be a billion dollars in debt.

To be sure, the tax story is more complicated than just income-tax rates. There are capital-gains taxes, inheritance taxes, real-estate taxes, etc. Each responds to rate cuts in a slightly different way. But rates and revenues never — I repeat, never — line up squarely.

Politicians of both parties, Republicans and Democrats, may well be driving the nation into bankruptcy — but they are doing it by spending, not by tax cutting. On the contrary, tax cuts are one of the few things that actually generate revenue which minimally offsets the spending orgy.

Here’s the deal: Enable the rich to get richer by cutting their tax rates, collect more taxes from them in the process of their doing more with their money, and in the process make everyone better off with a stronger economy and higher incomes. Who wouldn’t take that deal? Only someone stuck on class envy and collectivism.