Bloomberg News: Obama, Democrats Embrace Fog of Complex Tax Plans, by Amity Shlaes:
Welcome to the new era of tax intelligence. If a tax idea doesn’t sound as if it were written in a seminar at Swarthmore College, it is stupid. The more complex, the better.
Democrats are adroit at developing such proposals. The party appears to favor plans that serve at least two seemingly unrelated ends: We should punish oil companies while soothing middle-class mothers (windfall-profits-tax revenue plan). And we should curtail carbon emissions while paying tribute to the glories of the free market (cap-and-trade legislation). …
You can argue that Washington’s new affection for complexity is a good sign. Give two parties license to be complex, and they may emerge from the fog with a decent bipartisan compromise. That’s what happened in 1986, when Democrats joined Ronald Reagan in passing the act that brought the top income-tax rate down to 28%. …
Sustaining certain aspects of the current horrible system may be good. One of McCain’s best moves this year was to posit that the Bush tax cuts were worth renewing for the continuity alone. McCain didn’t say that sustaining the current rates would yield a boom. He merely recognized that sometimes certainty is more important than stimuli.
The overall point isn’t that Obama has or even wants the worst economic programs. As noted here, there are intriguingly entrepreneur-friendly components to a lot of the ideas coming out of his campaign. It’s that complexity for its own sake is no substitute for virtue. A preoccupation with the political ideal of change can bring about the sort of change not even the senator himself wants.
3 responses to “Shlaes: Obama, Democrats Embrace Fog of Complex Tax Plans”
IT’S CAMPAIGN TIME!
The candidates are doing battle on taxes, and the TaxProf has the play-by-play: Shlaes: Obama, Democrats Embrace Fog of Complex…
IT’S CAMPAIGN TIME!
The candidates are doing battle on taxes, and the TaxProf has the play-by-play: Shlaes: Obama, Democrats Embrace Fog of Complex…
IT’S CAMPAIGN TIME!
The candidates are doing battle on taxes, and the TaxProf has the play-by-play: Shlaes: Obama, Democrats Embrace Fog of Complex…
IT’S CAMPAIGN TIME!
The candidates are doing battle on taxes, and the TaxProf has the play-by-play: Shlaes: Obama, Democrats Embrace Fog of Complex…
IT’S CAMPAIGN TIME!
The candidates are doing battle on taxes, and the TaxProf has the play-by-play: Shlaes: Obama, Democrats Embrace Fog of Complex…
IT’S CAMPAIGN TIME!
The candidates are doing battle on taxes, and the TaxProf has the play-by-play: Shlaes: Obama, Democrats Embrace Fog of Complex…
IT’S CAMPAIGN TIME!
The candidates are doing battle on taxes, and the TaxProf has the play-by-play: Shlaes: Obama, Democrats Embrace Fog of Complex…
IT’S CAMPAIGN TIME!
The candidates are doing battle on taxes, and the TaxProf has the play-by-play: Shlaes: Obama, Democrats Embrace Fog of Complex…
IT’S CAMPAIGN TIME!
The candidates are doing battle on taxes, and the TaxProf has the play-by-play: Shlaes: Obama, Democrats Embrace Fog of Complex…