Couldn’t Help But Notice (102907)
This quote’s a few days old but worth repeating — from Megan McArdle, on education (HT Instapundit):
MEGAN MCARDLE on education: “Every time I see some middle class parent prattling about vouchers ‘destroying’ the public schools by ‘cherry picking’ the best students, when they’ve made damn sure that their own precious little cherries have been plucked out of the failing school systems, I seethe with barely controllable inward rage. It is the vilest hypocrisy on display in American politics today.
If not the vilest, darn close.
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Dick Morris outlines “What She’d Do: Hillary’s Hidden Agenda.” If anyone outside of Mrs. Clinton’s inner circle would know, he would.
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This will drive Jim Dobson crazy:
Former Republican presidential candidate Sam Brownback emerged from a meeting with pro-abortion GOP hopeful Rudy Giuliani and said Friday he is more comfortable with the former mayor. The former New York leader invited Brownback, a key pro-life lawmaker in Congress, to talk with him about abortion.
Brownback made it clear he did not endorse Giuliani — he hasn’t endorsed any presidential candidate yet — but he said he is “much more comfortable” with Rudy Giuliani’s position on abortion.
George Will has related relevant observations on the issue in general.
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Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey comments on the Mother of All Tax Increases (MOAT), and notes an alternative (link requires paid subscription):
Contrary to its deceptive name, Mr. Rangel’s bill is not tax relief, but a breathtaking tax increase. And it is not tax reform, but just another round of new complexity layered on top of the existing tax code, with tweaked provisions, changed definitions and redistributed income to favored groups through carefully crafted new subsections. Compliance with the 60,000-page tax code costs Americans seven billion man-hours and over $140 billion in fees to accountants and consultants, all before a single check is cut to the government. While the AMT may be repealed by this bill, the inefficiencies and burdens that keep Washington lobbyists employed full time remain.
To be clear, the $140 billion is only what is paid out by taxpayers. The cost of the 7 billion hours in compliance is separate, and is roughly 48 hours for each person in the current workforce of 146 million. Think of what could be produced (i.e., added to GDP) if those 48 hours were used for a productive purpose.
The alternative looks like it would free up a lot of those hours:
Thankfully, there’s an alternative to Mr. Rangel’s redistributive approach, and it’s being offered by a group of pro-growth tax reformers in the House of Representatives. “The Taxpayer Choice Act,” is being offered by Reps. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.), Michele Bachmann (R., Minn.), Jeb Hensarling (R., Texas), and John Campbell (R., Calif.) that repeals the AMT while fundamentally reforming the tax code.
These young Republican legislative entrepreneurs offer taxpayers the choice of remaining in the current system with its itemized deductions, charts and schedules, or moving into a greatly simplified system that eliminates all deductions and loopholes while offering only two simple rates. All taxpayers would have a standard individual deduction of $12,500, and individuals earning below $100,000 would pay a flat 10% of income, while individuals earning above that would pay 25%. Calculating taxes would take less time than brewing a pot of coffee.
I’d like to include a twist to the 1040 that would have a taxpayer who clearly would owe nothing STOP at some point in the return, with a sign-off that basically says, “It should be obvious at this point that I/we don’t owe anything. Give me/us our money back. Leave me/us alone.”
Libs will go crazy over the 25% rate, of course. But here’s the fun part, from polling data a few years ago:
Poll data suggest that the wealthy are already paying more in taxes than the bulk of Americans think they should. A Zogby poll last year asked people what a fair tax rate would be for a person making $1 million per year — an income that would put someone in the top tenth of the top one percent of taxpayers. Seventeen percent of Americans said that 10 percent was the most one should pay and 29 percent said that 20 percent was the maximum.
- In other words, 46 percent of the American people think that millionaires today are already overtaxed, paying about 28 percent of their income to the federal government when 20 percent is the most they ought to pay.
- Only 21 percent of people in the survey agreed with Sen. John Kerry that tax rates should be higher than 30 percent.Lest one think that this is an isolated result, there are other polls with similar findings. A 2001 Fox News poll asked people the highest percentage of taxes anyone should have to pay.
- Some 52 percent said 20 percent was the most anyone should pay.
- Only 9 percent of people favored rates above 30 percent.
- Another Fox News poll in 1999 found 65 percent of people saying that 20 percent should be the maximum tax rate.
Remember, this is ALL income taxes, not just the federal income tax. Polls have consistently shown the results you’ve just seen for decades.
This is why you will almost never, if ever, hear the Charlie Rangel/Hillary Clinton crowd, whom I am tentatively naming “Team Chillary” (in honor of what they will do to the economy if they get their way), actually say that they want to raise the highest federal bracket to 39% or so with their MOAT, and then to 44% or so if the tax system in place since 2003 otherwise goes back to where it was in 2000 (this is usually referred to as “repealing the Bush tax cuts,” but should be seen as a big tax increase over what we’ve been used to now for many years). Instead they speak of tiny-sounding 4% surtaxes and the like.
This final item is posted as a separate entry at Wide Open.
Uh, tax (i>rate cut; and a tiny one at that. A real tax cut would have lowered not exploded revenue to the government.
Comment by Joe C. — October 29, 2007 @ 9:31 am
[...] H/t to Bizzy Blog. function toggleview(element1) { var element1 = document.getElementById(element1); if (element1.style.display == ‘block’ || element1.style.display == ”){ element1.style.display = ‘none’; }else{ element1.style.display = ‘block’; element1.style.position = ‘absolute’; } return; } copy and paste… <blockquote>This post by Megan McArdle at The Atlantic.com completely collapses and deflects the real problems in public school education, which have very little to do with whether vouchers exist or not. I don’t know anything about the D.C. voucher program (I don’t even know if D.C. has a… <small><br /> <a href=”http://www.writeslikeshetalks.com/2007/10/29/attention-to-vouchers-deflects-attention-from-what-we-really-need-to-fix/”>Attention to vouchers deflects attention from what we really need to fix</a> – http://www.writeslikeshetalks.com</small></blockquote> Sphere: Related Content [...]
Pingback by Attention to vouchers deflects attention from what we really need to fix | Writes Like She Talks — October 29, 2007 @ 9:40 am
The insidious manner of Hillary Clinton is not evident until one gets some context of life in the US. With most so called poor people owning their own homes, cars, air conditioners, mircowaves, etc. the perception of poverty is so disconnected from reality that most people really don’t have a clue who the poor really are. We the average people believe being poor is a person who either doesn’t have a job or a very low paying job not being able to afford the basics of life, i.e. 3 squares a day, a roof over one’s head and being warm in the winter. To liberals and the likes of Hillary Clinton, being poor means not earning the same amount as they do or being able to rub elbows with Bill Gates.
The liberals disconnected view of poverty means those who really have needs are simply shoved off in a corner out of sight under the guise that some government program has attended their “needs” when in fact, the bonified poor’s needs are actually the incentive to work and take initiative. Why should the poor work when they can be poor without working? There are plenty of jobs, in fact so much so that illegals are/were elbowing out those with initiative thus depressing wages and trapping those at the bottom, thus reinforcing the idea of why work when taking initiative leads to nothing.
Why are Dems engaging in such counterproductive behaviors? My answer is that they have run out of genuine ideas and have resorted to creating problems to solve them. Sounds outlandish? The entire reason for being Democrat is summed up by their advocacy of victimhood, if there are no victims, there is no reason to vote Democrat. One does not need a problem solver when there are no problems to solve. Most of the problems Dems carp about would be solved if they simply stopped interferring with the natural progression of things in our society. Insisting that illegals should be on the public dole and allowed to work here without our permission creates a whole class of people who are poor. Had the Dems and RINOs not been successful in frustrating the mandate of Law Enforcement to do their job, the people who are poor would have benefited from higher wages due to the worker shortage. Hence, poverity would be even more reduced now with a resultant drop government expenditures, not mention the Social Security Trust directly benefits by increased revenue from “higher wages”.
What’s worse is that this artifical low skilled glut of workers in the US has also harmed the very countries from which these people came. Had the natural progression been allowed to occur, US employers would have accelerated their outsourcing of jobs to the third world to balance the shortage, thus raising their entire country’s standard of living. Welfare in any form is bad, especially the remittances being sent back to the home country. All a remittance does is produce dependency and discourage progress. George Bush as a global Capitalist should have known better, the rising tide lifts all boats. As a globalist myself, I believe I am in a more credible position to critize the current administration’s fumbling of the illegal alien issue, than that of the those nationalists who opposed NAFTA and other free trade agreements.
BTW-all these issues are connected, illegal immigration, government spending, SS trust fund, health care, poverty, crime, etc. The dyfunctional interference in one are causes problems in all the other areas.
Comment by dscott — October 29, 2007 @ 10:31 am
dscott, exacerbating the whole thing is the education system, which is in reality turning out a disproportionate number low-skilled workers we already have a glut of. Many of them may not think that they are low-skilled, but they are.
Comment by TBlumer — October 29, 2007 @ 11:30 am
#1, JoeEC, actually, I think a bigger cut would have increased tax receipts even more, and would have grown the econ faster.
Tax receipts doubled during the Reagan years because the cuts were more substantial.
Comment by TBlumer — October 29, 2007 @ 11:34 am
TB,
Yeah, that’s my point. A tax cut decreases revenue, but a tax RATE cut increases revenue. My preference would be to have a tax rate cut to the point that revenue decreases (i.e. both a tax rate cut AND a tax cut).
Comment by Joe C. — October 29, 2007 @ 11:42 am