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Category: Budget and Taxes

“One-Time” Millionaires

Published October 1, 2022

In her front-page commentary piece about ‘one-time millionaires’ — largely small business owners who sell their businesses at retirement — Shirley Leung expresses very little sympathy — bordering on contempt — for the notion that such people might run afoul of the proposed new “Millionaire’s Tax”. Says she,

Let’s be real here. It’s hard to have sympathy for people who stand to make a lot of money from selling their businesses…

…

Unlike Ms. Leung, I find myself capable of great sympathy, indeed, for their plight…

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The Sledge Hammer

Published April 18, 2021

In your article, you predict 3 things that are likely to happen “…when people feel they cannot talk openly about a subject…”.

Here is another prediction: The Sledge Hammer.

That is the name I have given to a phenomenon I have observed many times in the last 40 or 50 years — prototypical examples are the passage in CA of proposition 209, outlawing affirmative action, and propositions 13 (CA)  and 2-1/2 (MA) limiting the rate of property tax increases.  But it might also, perhaps, be used as well to describe Donald Trump’s election to the Presidency, not to mention “Defund the Police”….

…

The people who can see that there is, indeed, a problem but are told to shut up about it get impatient.  Then they get frustrated.  Then they get angry.  Then they get furious.

And then they swing the populist Sledge Hammer:  “Screw all of you condescending bastards!  If we can’t fix the system, we’ll destroy it!”

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Free Tax Cut?

Published March 3, 2020

I will grant the validity of your assertion that there is no such thing as a free tax cut.

Will you acknowledge the validity of the counter-assertion: That there is no such thing as a free tax?

Or, for that matter, a free regulation?

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Health Care Payment Reform

Published August 4, 2019

From 25 years ago: My Proposal for Health Care Payment reform.

Still, I think, more rational than anything else I’ve heard. Agree with me or convince me I’m wrong — either is a good outcome if it means we end up with something that actually works without destroying either health care or our culture of liberty or both.

The original cover letter to the Concord Coalition and to various Senators and Congressmen

The original cover letter to then-Governor Howard Dean, of Vermont

The proposal

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Yes, raising taxes affects people!

Published March 14, 2013

Taking money out of someone’s pocket by taxing them has exactly the same effect as cutting their salary or raising their mortgage payment or increasing the cost of their groceries. It makes them poorer. It means there is less money for them to pump back into the economy by spending it at the hardware store or at the movies or at the gas station or on someone to cut the grass….

I am not in the camp of, “No new revenue ever”. I sympathize with the Republicans who look at the history of budget debates and conclude that raising revenue before cutting spending leads, inevitably, to spending never being cut because it makes the problem seem not so bad. But I expect, and would support, paying more in taxes if I thought that it was really going to be spent to dig us out of the hole we are in, rather than being a down payment on digging the hole deeper.

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Politicians “making decisions about your birth control”

Published October 18, 2012

As a consumer of resources, I love the idea of someone else paying to support my lifestyle choices. But, as a producer of resources — and as a liberty-minded citizen of the American republic — I abhor the notion that the government should oblige me to provide for the lifestyle choices of others.

Perhaps the availability of contraception transcends mere “lifestyle choice” and comprises a public good worthy of government compulsion. Perhaps it doesn’t. That is worth a debate and I won’t pass judgement on it here.

But I must insist that those debating the issue do so honestly. No one is threatening to take away your birth control. All they are asking is that they not be forced to pay for it.

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Rational spending: it’s a matter of (dis)trust

Published November 12, 2010

What assurance can you offer me that, if I go along with a robust governmental stimulus financed by debt and inflation now, then the Congress and the President will follow through with austerity programs to resolve that debt and inflation later?

Because, unless you (or someone) can provide such assurances, can convince me that our politicians and government bureaucrats will suddenly change their approach to fiscal policy and behave in the rational way that economists would advise them to do, I and many like me cannot support such stimulative policies.

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Citizens United

Published February 9, 2010

“No taxation without representation” was the rallying cry of the American revolution, an explicit acknowledgement that the role of taxpayer — the role of providing financial support to government — is an overtly political one. If corporations are not individuals for political purposes, then they should not be taxed as individual entities. If corporations are really no more than aggregates of their stakeholders, and have no right to political participation other than through those stakeholders, then political duties, including the paying of taxes, should also apply strictly and purely through those stakeholders.

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Estate taxes and other tax oddities

Published November 21, 2009

I actually think the Estate Tax has a beneficial consequence in preventing the establishment of multi-generational economic dynasties. Apart from the potential detrimental effects of such dynasties on society and the economy, they do spiritual damage to those who inherit them: handing someone “success” without any need for effort or sacrifice is almost always a recipe for intellectual, psychological, and moral dissipation.

My objections to the estate tax — and to other tax policies — are based more on basic ideas of economic fairness and on the cultural ideals of “family”.

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