{"id":40758,"date":"2017-11-07T05:00:27","date_gmt":"2017-11-07T10:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=40758"},"modified":"2020-07-06T10:43:19","modified_gmt":"2020-07-06T14:43:19","slug":"paying-for-tax-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/11\/07\/paying-for-tax-cuts\/","title":{"rendered":"“Paying for” tax cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the latest issue of the Libertarian Enterprise<\/em>, L. Neil Smith<\/a> explains why he isn’t a fan of the notion that tax cuts need to be “paid for”:<\/p>\n

I am not an economist, nor do I play one on TV, but I know a hand-job when I see one. The mindless mutants who are mangling Donald Trump\u2019s tax plans are dragging this nation and the world into a Da-Daesque vortex we may never get out of. (Only a \u201cprogressive\u201d Democrat would stomp a man\u2019s legs, break them in a dozen places, and then make fun of him because he can\u2019t walk.) While lowering almost everybody\u2019s taxes, they want a special bracket appended to the deal to punish people with a million dollars or more to \u201cpay for\u201d everybody else\u2019s tax relief. My question, in an era when government takes too much away from us already, why the bloody hell should it be allowed to steal more?<\/p>\n

Even from people who are supposedly hated by the \u201cmasses\u201d? (I seriously doubt it. \u201cThe Democrat Party masses, more likely. Most right-wing masses \u2014 if there is such a thing \u2014 aspire to become millionaires, themselves.)<\/p>\n

Half a century ago, when I was a shiny new Objectivist warrior, jousting with various statist orcs and trolls on the left, a major concern of theirs seemed to be the big, luxurious houses that rich people built for themselves or bought and lived in. Somehow, there was something evil or sinful in that \u2014 \u201cconspicuous consumption\u201d one famous comtard called it \u2014 and it needed to be stopped<\/em>. It didn\u2019t ever seem to have occurred to these feeble-minded pickpockets (who had likely never done an honest day\u2019s work in their worthless lives) that the construction of a big, luxurious house (today, we call them McMansions) requires the skilled services of dozens, if not hundreds, of earth-movers, concrete-workers, framers, finish carpenters, glazers, roofers, plumbers, sheet-rock guys, landscapers, etc., most of whom have families to feed, clothe, and house, themselves.<\/p>\n

They need rich people to build big, luxurious houses for.<\/p>\n

In general, there are few, if any, ways the most malign \u201cmalefactor of great wealth\u201d can spend his money without benefitting someone who needs a job. Even cocaine has to be cultivated and processed by somebody. This lesson was learned the hard way back in 1990 when Idiot-in-Chief George 41 Bush broke his \u201cread my lips\u201d promise and allowed a punitive \u201cluxury tax\u201d to be levied on yachts, big, expensive cars, and assorted other keen stuff like that. Hundreds of jobs were lost. Thousands suffered. One company went from 220 workers to 50 overnight. Within two years those who had stirred up class envy the most energetically were calling for repeal of this \u201chate the rich\u201d tax. In the same way, millionaires\u2019 money would fly overseas in an instant and vanish from our struggling economy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the latest issue of the Libertarian Enterprise, L. Neil Smith explains why he isn’t a fan of the notion that tax cuts need to be “paid for”: I am not an economist, nor do I play one on TV, but I know a hand-job when I see one. The mindless mutants who are mangling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,10,53,13],"tags":[377,1037,976,1382,1020,118],"class_list":["post-40758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-liberty","category-politics","category-usa","tag-conspicuousconsumption","tag-donaldtrump","tag-georgehwbush","tag-lneilsmith","tag-progressives","tag-taxes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-aBo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40758"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58453,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40758\/revisions\/58453"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}