TAX CUT INSANITY

I generally don't do this, but one of the two essays to which I linked yesterday really made me want to comment, but I just didn't have time last night, thus, the quickie twofer. So now I'm going to comment. Don't worry I won't run on.

Anyway, it's about time a mainstream "liberal" pundit like E. J. Dionne hit on the Republican obsession with tax cuts. Even I have to admit that tax cuts do, indeed, stimulate the economy. I mean, that's just common sense: tax cuts work in pretty much the same way as the old-school Keynesian assertion during the Great Depression that the federal government should pump tax dollars right back into the economy in order to stimulate growth. That is, freeing up money means more people are spending money, which means either greater demand or greater supply depending on what you're targeting.

So tax cuts work. The question very few people seem to be asking is how well they work. Or for how long the stimulus lasts. Or what kinds of cuts are going to be the most effective. Or what sector of the economy will yield the most overall economic benefit. A few people do ask such questions, but not very loudly these days. Listening to GOP rhetoric on the issue leaves the impression that all tax cuts are good, which is simply not true. For instance, a new massive tax cut for corporations that have mined the tax laws for as many loopholes as possible, and in effect pay virtually no income taxes at all, won't do a damned thing for the economy--indeed, this hurts the economy by forcing the federal government deeper into debt, which has severe economic ramifications.

But the Republicans just don't care. They are now, and have been for a long time, the party of tax cuts, or "tax relief," as Bush has taken to calling them. Further compounding the problem is that, it seems to me, Republicans consciously use tax cuts to reward wealthy donors while using rhetoric that makes it sound as though they're somehow helping average ordinary citizens. That's truly fucked, because as business taxes and taxes on the wealthy decrease, personal taxes increase. In other words, tax cuts, in political practice, have nothing to do with stimulating the economy. It's all about making the rich richer and everybody else poorer. That is, in the hands of the GOP, tax cuts are an act of class warfare. No surprise there: conservatives have been waging class warfare since the beginning of this nation. And usually they win.

Like I said, tax cuts can be a genuine part of an overall strategy to stimulate the economy depending on how they are configured. But tax cuts at all costs is insanity.

What on earth are the Republicans going to do when there are no taxes left to cut?

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