I’ve written many times about the perverse and destructive economic impact of class-warfare taxation.
Today, we’re doing to look at the sloppy math associated with the fiscal plans of Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and the rest of the soak-the-rich crowd.
First, here are some excerpts from a story in the Hill.
The progressive push to raise taxes on the rich is gaining new momentum. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has already proposed a wealth tax to raise funds for a variety of new government programs, on Thursday unveiled a plan to expand Social Security by creating two taxes on wage and investment income for wealthy Americans. …Since the start of the year, much of the debate around taxes among Democrats has been over how much and how best to raise taxes on the rich. …Democratic presidential candidates across the board have proposed ways to increase taxes on the rich. The developments have encouraged liberal groups pressing for higher taxes on the wealthy. …Sanders, the Democratic presidential candidate and Vermont senator, has legislation to expand and extend the solvency of the retirement program that would subject all income above $250,000 to the Social Security payroll tax. Sanders’s bill is co-sponsored in the Senate by two fellow presidential candidates, Sens. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.).
These ideas would do considerable harm to the economy and reduce American competitiveness.
But let’s focus on whether the left’s tax agenda is capable of financing their spending wish lists.
Brian Riedl of the Manhattan Institute just released his Book of Charts. There are dozens of sobering visuals, but here’s the one that’s relevant for today.
The bottom line is that our friends on the left have an enormous list of goodies they want to dispense, yet their proposed tax hikes (even assuming no Laffer Curve) would only pay for a fraction of their agenda.
Which is why lower-income and middle-class taxpayers need to realize that they’re the ones with bulls-eyes on their back.
Just like we’ve seen on the other side of the Atlantic, there’s no way to finance a European-sized welfare state without pillaging ordinary people. Especially since upper-income taxpayers can change their behavior to avoid most tax hikes.
So brace yourselves for a value-added tax, a carbon tax, a financial transactions tax, and higher payroll taxes.
[…] nonsensical. Simply stated, there are not enough rich people and they don’t earn enough money (and they have relatively easy ways of protecting themselves if their tax rates are […]
[…] nonsensical. Simply stated, there are not enough rich people and they don’t earn enough money (and they have relatively easy ways of protecting themselves if their tax rates are […]
[…] nonsensical. Simply stated, there are not enough rich people and they don’t earn enough money (and they have relatively easy ways of protecting themselves if their tax rates are […]
[…] Moreover, I don’t want politicians to have more money to finance a bigger burden of government. […]
[…] want more revenue to finance bigger […]
[…] also violates the laws of math. The Labour Party, for all intents and purposes, wants a big expansion of the welfare state […]
[…] wonder he’s now embracing class-warfare tax policy. One of his giant tax increases, which I should have mentioned in the interview, is a version of […]
[…] My conclusion is that Henwood has profoundly awful policy preferences (Europeans have much lower living standards, for instance), but doesn’t believe in make-believe budgeting. […]
[…] close with a chart from Brian Riedl of the Manhattan […]
[…] As I warned in the interview, the class-warfare taxes won’t collect much revenue, especially compared to the massive spending increases the candidates are proposing. That’s […]
Hi Dan,
You mean “without”.
[…] « The Left’s Class-Warfare Numbers Don’t Add Up […]
sanders (2.5M)… warren (8M) and harris (4M)… are all millionaires… their main objective in politics is to satisfy their lust for self aggrandizement… do you really believe they give a rat’s patootie… about the poor? the dispossessed? they lust for raw power… the capacity to dominate a population… impose their vision of a socialist utopia on the rest of us… and they intend to build this ideal society on the backs of the middle class… everyone knows that’s where the money is… the rich can defend themselves… the middle class and working poor can’t… so if the socialists win the presidency… “brace yourselves for a value-added tax, a carbon tax, a financial transactions tax, and higher payroll taxes.” perhaps the most disgusting part of the plan is to tax carbon using pseudo science to justify their tax policies… it has been years since a political class has worked so hard to use junk science as a source of justification for a destructive public policy… the national socialists did it as a method of justifying german racial policies of the 1930’s… after all… it was “science”… how could it possibly be disputed?
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These short, but to the point, messages are great food for the much missing thought life of Americans today. Thank you for the time invested and personal risk truth tellers experience.
What’s worse is I don’t even support the things they want to do [supposedly] with that stolen wealth.
If we can keep gov’t from feeding those policies, maybe they’d starve to death.
Nevermind. We should keep them as malnourished as possible but Reagan was right when he said [paraphrasing] the closest thing to eternal life here is a gov’t program.