Somewhere in heaven, Warren Harding and Andrew Mellon are laughing themselves into tears over how pathologically stupid liberals are.
Keep in mind, for most of our nation’s history we didn’t even HAVE federal income taxes. Harding and Mellon were the first pair to try lowering tax rates in the belief that rewarding success and investment would stimulate more success and investment – as opposed to the liberal thinking that if you just keep punishing the producers, they will surely produce more. The bottom line is that Tax Cuts INCREASE Revenues; They Have ALWAYS Increased Revenues every single time we have ever done it. And the bottom line is that every single time we have allowed liberals to try their Marxist class warfare punish the success of the rich meme, it has backfired.
The federalist papers called the states the laboratories for democracy; the idea was that the states under a relatively weak federal government could try different things; and to the degree those attempts worked or failed, people could vote with their feet.
The only thing that keeps democracy from working, in the federalist sense, is a federal government that usurps power. Which is of course what we’ve got such that failing states get propped up while successful ones get undermined.
Still, look at what has happened in states like Maryland or New York or California and realize that high-tax liberalism has failed over and over again. But Democrats are determined to remain stupid.
The quintessential example of this determination to remain pathologically stupid and to ignore reality whenever it gets in the way of liberalism is the infamous yacht tax that taxed the purchase of luxury items. A central tenet of economic liberalism is that rich people are incapable of changing their behavior, such that Democrats can raise their taxes by a given percentage and thus obtain that same given percentage in higher revenue. So they imposed a tax on luxury items such as yachts that only rich people tend to buy, figuring that they would thereby increase revenues and punish the rich at the same time. But guess what happened? Rich people quit buying those yachts; Democrats gutted entire industries. And the only people were hurt were the small businesses that built and maintained yachts and other luxury items and the employees who worked in those industries who lost their jobs.
Democrats keep making the exact same mistake over and over and over again.
Democrats cannot learn; to put it in theological terms, they despise the truth and want to believe lies. They are immune to reality.
And the states with the highest tax rates invariably also have the highest debts. And high tax Europe – the model Obama is pursuing – is going down the drain. Which add to further proofs that the economic policies of liberalism are the economic equivalent of a circular firing squad.
And liberals are pathologically stupid wherever you go:
50p tax rate ‘failing to boost revenues’
The amount of income tax paid fell sharply last month in the first formal indication that the new 50p higher rate is not raising the expected amount of revenue.
By Robert Winnett, and James Kirkup
10:58PM GMT 21 Feb 2012The Treasury received £10.35 billion in income tax payments from those paying by self-assessment last month, a drop of £509 million compared with January 2011. Most other taxes produced higher revenues over the same period.
Senior sources said that the first official figures indicated that there had been “manoeuvring” by well-off Britons to avoid the new higher rate. The figures will add to pressure on the Coalition to drop the levy amid fears it is forcing entrepreneurs to relocate abroad.
The self-assessment returns from January, when most income tax is paid by the better-off, have been eagerly awaited by the Treasury and government ministers as they provide the first evidence of the success, or failure, of the 50p rate. It is the first year following the introduction of the 50p rate which had been expected to boost tax revenues from self-assessment by more than £1 billion.
Although the official statistics do not disclose how much money was paid at the 50p rate of tax, the figures indicate that it is falling short of the money the levy was expected to raise.
A Treasury source said the relatively poor revenues from self-assessment returns was partly down to highly-paid individuals arranging their affairs to avoid paying the 50p rate.
“It’s true that SA revenues are a bit disappointing — it’s still early, but it looks like there’s been quite a lot of forestalling and other manoeuvring to avoid the top rate,” said the source.
However, another Treasury source added that the tax deadline had been extended by two days because of industrial action at HM Revenue and Customs. Therefore, it was too early to begin assessing the revenues raised from the 50p rate of tax because about 20 per cent of self-assessment tax is paid in the hours before the deadline.
Francesca Lagerberg, head of tax at Grant Thornton, an accountancy firm, said: “My guess is that because the 50 per cent rate was flagged up in advance many taxpayers, particularly those with their own businesses, decided to extract dividends ahead of the change. It highlights the fact that high tax rates don’t always deliver high tax revenues.”
George Osborne, the Chancellor, is expected to receive a definitive analysis from the revenue on the 50p rate before next month’s Budget. The Liberal Democrats have insisted that it must stay because it is important to demonstrate that the rich are paying their fair share.
David Laws, a Lib Dem MP, has also suggested reducing tax relief on pensions for top earners.
The prospect of higher taxation on pensions comes as savers complain that low interest rates and quantitative easing have pushed down returns on savings and pensions.
Charlie Bean, the deputy governor of the Bank of England, last night insisted that those people should accept the pain as the price of restoring the wider economy to health.
The Confederation of British Industry, in its Budget submission today, urges ministers not introduce new levies on the rich, warning that the UK “will become a less attractive location for entrepreneurs and key employees”.
Wealthy people, confronted by excessively high tax rates, have several options: they can move, they can move their money somewhere else, they can hide or shelter their money. In our system, they can also take advantage of so many loopholes that the IRS ends up playing a losing game of Whackamole.
Meanwhile, the very premise of liberals is also deeply flawed: even assuming that high taxes would raise more in revenue – which it factually does NOT do – you still have the dilemma that taking more money out of the private economy and putting more money into the pockets of government is counterproductive and frankly immoral.
Conservative principles lack in demagogic power. They rule in actually WORKING. As one example of that success, Texas created 38% of ALL the jobs created in America in 2010.
Tags: boost tax revenues, debt, Harding, income taxes, liberal states, luxury tax, Mellon, revenues, taxes
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