Check out the latest titled “Taxing Times” as it appears at National Review Online. The article addresses the potential ills if Senator Obama wins the White House, and goes ahead with the tax agenda he has been touting on the campaign trail.
The entire column should be read, but let’s note a few points from Sowell right here:
• Those who are receptive to Senator Barack Obama’s plan to increase taxes on “the rich” seem not to understand that the issue is the nation’s loss of wealth. Today, wealth can leave the country when heavy taxes threaten it — instantly, in an age of electronic financial transfers — and create jobs and economic growth overseas, instead of at home.
• Jack up the capital-gains tax rate in the U.S. and more Americans can be expected to send their capital elsewhere. That means sending jobs elsewhere, so that even people with no capital to invest lose employment opportunities. Economists have trouble determining how many people are affected by a tax increase because those affected extend far beyond those who write the checks to pay the government. Taxes on businesses can get passed along to consumers, in whole or in part, even though it is only the business that writes the check to the government.
• The idea that you can single out one segment of society to be taxed or mandated, for the benefit of the rest of society, is reminiscent of a San Francisco automobile dealer’s sign: “We cheat the other guy and pass the savings on to you.”
Like I said: intelligent and insightful.
Raymond J. Keating
Chief Economist
Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council
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