"They're Playing a Different Game"

This morning, eating a bowl of cereal and waiting for eggs to come to a boil, I happened to tune in to Dennis Prager's program and caught a snippet of his discussion on leftism and taxes.

More important to leftists than liberty, Dennis argues, is equality. Bringing the wealthy down is more important than bringing the poor up. That's why the left believes in taxing the wealthy. Obama's tiresome and disingenuous mantra (my words), that millionaires and billionaires aren't paying their "fair share," is the latest riff on this idea.

If a conservative were to challenge that notion by explaining that raising taxes on the wealthy actually suppresses prosperity for everyone in society and not just the wealthy, the left wouldn't care. Dennis suggests an analogy. It would be like telling a baseball player, "If you do [thus and such], you won't be able to score a touchdown." But the baseball player doesn't care about touchdowns. He cares about home runs. It's a different game. 

That's the way it is with the Left, says Dennis. The Left doesn't care about prosperity. It cares about equality. The Left is interested in a different goal. They're playing a different game. 

I find this analogy pretty intriguing. I wonder how others view it. 

The question about whether raising taxes on the wealthy helps or hurts the economy was addressed in an article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal by Stephen Moore. Moore argues that raising taxes hurts the economy and cites several times throughout American history when this was demonstrated, including during and after JFK's administration. 

Moore writes:

JFK cut rates by about 30% for every income group. He argued that the lower tax rates would "boost the economy, produce revenues, and achieve a future budget surplus." He even called lower rates an "investment in the future." His prediction that the economy would surge was validated by rapid growth every year from 1965 through 1968. Tax collections grew by 8.6% per year and unemployment fell to 3.4%. "The unusual budget spectacle of sharply rising revenues following the biggest tax cut in history," announced a 1966 U.S. News and World Report article, "is beginning to astonish even those who pushed hardest for tax cuts in the first place."

This is the kind of common-sense fiscal policy we might have seen instituted under a Romney administration. Unfortunately, common sense fiscal policy is lost on the class warfare policies of hard-leftists like Obama and his fellow Democrats who, believing they were given a mandate in the 2012 election, are trotting onto the football field carrying gloves and bats, intent less on lowering the deficit and stimulating job creation than they are on leveling the playing field. They're playing a different game.

"Why Lower Tax Rates are Good for Everyone," by Stephen Moore (Wall Street Journal, November 15, 2012).