Michael Barone‘s latest Washington Examiner column asks: Why do young liberal bloggers “seem to invest so much psychic energy” into the issue of raising tax rates?
Some of this may just be team ball: You cheer when your side puts up numbers on the scoreboard. So Democratic cheerleaders are rah-rahing what they insist on calling repeal of the Bush tax cuts (which have been in effect now longer than the Clinton tax increases they rolled back).
But the liberal bloggers cannot be entirely ignorant of the knowledge that we have a pretty progressive income tax already. In 2009 the top 1 percent of earners reported 17 percent of adjusted gross income and paid 37 percent of total income tax revenues.
By some measures the American tax system, including the payroll tax and state and local taxes, is more progressive — in the sense of extracting disproportionate shares of revenue from high earners — than most European tax regimes, which rely heaving on value-added taxes. …
… I think the answer to the puzzle can be found in a remark Barack Obama made during the 2008 fall campaign, a remark that seemed to go mostly unnoticed.
ABC’s Charlie Gibson asked candidate Obama if he would raise capital gains taxes even if, as in the past, that brought in less revenue to the federal government.
Yes, said Obama. “I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.”
Ponder that answer for a moment. A candidate for president — president now — said he wants to take more money from people who earned it even though doing so would produce less money for the government. …
… Higher tax rates on high earners, even if they produce less revenue, are an attempt to centralize power in government and to limit the autonomy and countervailing power of individuals in the voluntary sector.
