In today’s Wall Street Journal, Alan Reynolds here demolishes the case being made by the mega-state redistributionists for higher tax rates on “the rich.”
Reynolds’ argument is Rock of Gibraltar solid on the impact of taxes, but he doesn’t go into what I think is the really crucial point. More revenue for the federal government will just encourage more wasteful spending. Confiscating wealth from the idle rich, the productive rich, or anyone else takes money away from potential business investments, charitable donations, and job-creating consumption and transfers it to the wastrels in Washington. That will make the nation poorer, although politically favored special interest groups will remain fat and happy a while longer.
The old notion that government spending is for “the public good” is now widely understood to be just a cruel joke. If we can’t starve the beast, at least we should stop overfeeding it.
