RR Phantom
Location : Wasted Space
Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
 |  Subject: Idiot Matthew Yglesias: How About A Tax Code Based On Envy And Designed To Punish?  Tue Jun 09, 2015 11:19 pm | |
| Why are Democrats/progressives/leftists always agitating for higher taxes? It's not just a noble effort to balance the budget, though that's what they hide behind. No, they want to feed the leviathan, to gorge government on as much of other people's money as they can.
They also want to use the tax code to punish, to take control of society and shape it how they see fit.
They don't often admit this out loud in public, but Matthew Yglesias appears to have had a lapse in judgment and let the truth leak out when he wrote about "the case for confiscatory taxation" on Vox.com.
"Maybe at least some taxes should be really high. Maybe even really really high. So high as to (be) useless for revenue-raising purposes — but powerful for achieving other ends," writes Yglesias.
Yglesias finds confiscatory taxation useful for breaking "the doom loop of oligarchy whereby concentrated wealth breeds political power breeds greater concentration of wealth" and cutting what he believes to be excessive CEO pay.
While advocating a 90% marginal tax rate on salaries above $10 million, he supposes that some of our more highly paid Americans would make changes to avoid the burden. "Maybe," he says, "we really would see a reduction of effort, or at least a relaxation of the intensity with which the performers pursue money."
What, he asks, would be the harm in that?
"Imagine (if) the very best hedge fund managers and law firm partners became inclined to quit the field a bit sooner and devote their time to hobbies. What would we lose, as a society?"
What a wonderful parlor game! Let's just sit around and dream up government policies so painful that people will change their lives to live exactly as we believe they should.
Cato Institute economist Daniel Mitchell rightly calls this "spite-driven tax policy" and names Yglesias an "honest leftist" for being open about his desire for higher taxes.
But then it's not Yglesias' or anyone else's job to engineer, manipulate and shape society into some neat box that harmonizes with their idea of utopia. Yet many on the left truly believe that they are much smarter than the rest of us, that their morals are higher, their ethics more refined and their wisdom more developed, and that they are therefore suited to guide and govern. It is the modern-day justification of ruling by divine right.
Mitchell reminds us that Yglesias has company. Much of the left dreams of "higher tax rates for reasons of spite and envy" even when those higher taxes will not increase government revenue.
There's a lot more that Yglesias doesn't understand, and Mitchell unravels it for him and includes supporting links. While we think Mitchell is persuasive, we don't think Yglesias will be moved. He's just too progressively progressive.
http://news.investors.com/blogs-capital-hill/060915-756560-using-confiscatory-taxes-to-penalize-the-wealthy.htm
 |
|
CovOps
 Location : Ether-Sphere
Job/hobbies : Irrationality Exterminator
Humor : Über Serious
| | Subject: Re: Idiot Matthew Yglesias: How About A Tax Code Based On Envy And Designed To Punish? Tue Jun 09, 2015 11:49 pm | |
| I propose a tax on 'Progressives' (parasites).
Since they cost society far more, than say capitalists (producers), the socialists should pay higher rates.
Then watch all socialists reclassify themselves to 'capitalists' and end the tax charging proposals.
Win-Win.
 |
|
