House of Eratosthenes

Evidently, not enough people have figured out yet the lunacy involved in spending more money on new programs, and then flailing around for more tax revenues to pay for it. So Paul Krugman is intent on showing everybody how crazy it can get. Calling Nurse Ratched:

The supercommittee was a superdud — and we should be glad. Nonetheless, at some point we’ll have to rein in budget deficits. And when we do, here’s a thought: How about making increased revenue an important part of the deal?

And I don’t just mean a return to Clinton-era tax rates. Why should 1990s taxes be considered the outer limit of revenue collection? Think about it: The long-run budget outlook has darkened, which means that some hard choices must be made. Why should those choices only involve spending cuts? Why not also push some taxes above their levels in the 1990s?

Let me suggest two areas in which it would make a lot of sense to raise taxes in earnest, not just return them to pre-Bush levels: taxes on very high incomes and taxes on financial transactions.

Noel Sheppard points out the obvious:

As I’ve noted many times in the past, if we had only grown our total expenditures at the rate of inflation since 2007, we would have had a $413 billion deficit in the just-ended fiscal year 2011. This would be even lower in the current year given projections of $2.9 trillion in unified tax receipts.

When you consider that total unified outlays in 2007 – before the Democrats took over Congress! – were $2.7 trillion, and that they rose to a staggering $3.8 trillion in just four years or 41 percent, it’s just absurd to blame our fiscal woes on revenues.

That last paragraph from Sheppard nails down exactly what’s so nutty about all this. If our federal disbursements increased by 41 percent over, let’s say, about 25 years I could then see why so many people might trudge down the Krugman path and demand higher taxes on the very rich. “It must be done,” “The money can’t come from anyplace else,” and all that…I could see it. Wouldn’t agree with it, but I could see it.

We’re talking about an equivalent increase over four years. Fine, one MORE time, here we go again: What do you do with your household budget when you’ve increased your expenses by five-twelfths over four years, and find yourself in financial trouble?

What do you do when you’re running a business, one of your employees does that with his own household budget, and comes barging in one day demanding a raise?

As you yourself have noted, with libs, higher taxes are a feature not a bug. There’s never a situation where they don’t want to raise taxes. Times are flush? We need to raise taxes, because of Teh Fairness. Times are tough? We need to raise taxes, because of Teh Stimulus. Martians invading? We need to raise taxes to pay for counseling and aromatherapy….

[In fact, that there might be one of two situations in which liberals would vote against a tax hike — if it were going to the icky, icky military. They practically concuss themselves putting on the green eyeshades when it comes to defense spending]

[The other situation, of course, is when higher taxes affect them directly. Like, you know, the Warren Buffet tax that Warren Buffet was so huge on…. but that explicitly exempts Warren Buffet].
- Severian | 11/28/2011 @ 11:40
[In fact, that there might be one of two situations in which liberals would vote against a tax hike — if it were going to the icky, icky military.

Yup. I love how they suddenly turn into deficit hawks (“We can’t afford it!”) when the subject is either tax cuts or defense.

I also noted that the Left trotted out the cost canard when the Right started demanding that the Bush Administration get control of the southern border (an actual national security issue, not just one of draining social services and rampant drug-related crime and human smuggling) by means of physical barriers, monitoring devices, etc. “Do you wingnuts have any idea how LONG that border is?! 2000 miles! Do you realize what that would COST???”

Meanwhile, it’s no problem to spend a trillion and a half on a completely unwarranted, unwanted, unnecessary overhaul of the healthcare system. For what ObamaCare is going to cost, we could seal off the entire country, north and south, and have enough left over to buy every family in the US an Olympic-sized swimming pool.
- cylarz | 11/28/2011 @ 21:56

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Paul Krugman Wants Higher TaxesMonday, November 28th, 2011

Paul Krugman Wants Higher Taxes
Monday, November 28th, 2011