Lately, we’ve been hearing a lot about how important it is to keep taxes low on the rich. Not, as we all might suspect, because all the Congressmen saying it have taken somewhere in the neighborhood of five hundred grand in “campaign contributions” from very rich people who generally don’t tend to part with money unless they think they’ll get something out of it; instead, it is because these people are the “job creators” who drive the economy and if they have to spend all their money in taxes then they won’t be able to spend any on creating jobs.
Now, one might…one just might…point out that we’ve been cutting taxes on the rich for the last decade and all we’ve gotten to show for it is a net loss of five million jobs and a small group of very rich people who have gotten much, much richer…but instead, I think we should take all these people at their word. I think that we should treat these people as the job creators they really are, just like the Republicans in Congress say. And to that end, I think we should do exactly what the Republicans insist is the best solution for the economy, the best solution for just about anything. Let’s let the free market handle it.
Specifically, I think we should tie the top income tax rate to the unemployment rate. Say, a baseline tax rate of twenty-five percent, with a baseline unemployment rate of five percent. Every percentage point below that, the top tax rate decreases by thirteen percent (down to a minimum of one percent, a purely token rate.) And of course, every percentage point the unemployment rate goes up above five, the top tax rate increases by thirteen percent (up to a maximum of ninety-nine percent; after all, nobody should be denied the right to make a living.)
Naturally, the specific numbers could be haggled a bit, the tax loopholes closed here and there to make sure that they’re not shirking their duties as job creators, the exact unemployment figures that we use to calculate this tax rate precisely detailed to avoid fraud. But in theory, this should be exactly what the nation’s captains of industry want. They have an incentive to put the nation’s unemployed back to work, we have a way to balance the budget in times of economic stress, and the Republicans get to put their money where their mouth is when it comes to free-market economics and their worship of America’s ultra-wealthy as the people who make America great.
I don’t know why, but something tells me they won’t go for it…
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I get that the Republican Party is going to be, to some extent, anti-tax, seeing as how they’ve historically been the party of big business. Fiscal conservatism is all well and good, and has its place and time. The problem is that recently (like, the last 25 years or so) the Republican Party has been overrun by tax fanatics–the most recent incarnation of which are the Tea Party–who take it as an article of faith that tax cuts will solve every problem the nation faces. The Tea Party made a lot of noise and got a few people elected to Congress, and they took that as some sort of mandate to double down on their fanaticism. Meanwhile, the Republican establishment is too wrapped up in electoral politics to tell the new kids to sit down and shut up. So now you’ve got one of the two major parties in America effectively being run by the fringiest of its fringe. These people hate the government bureaucracy, the Democratic Party, and Barack Obama so much that they would be willing to destroy the national, and quite probably the international, economy simply because raising taxes by even one cent is a bridge too far.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: the Tea Partiers are not anti-tax patriots; they’re economic terrorists. And yes, I use that word with all the weight it implies.
As an aside, I find it amusing that the Boston Tea Party was, in part, an act of protest against a corporation and its relationship with the government (the East India Company and the British Crown, respectively), and the dealings between the two which resulted in the corporation getting out of paying taxes. This little incongruous piece of history (among others) is, of course, absolutely lost on the 10-20% of people that would identify themselves as the spiritual descendants of the Founders.
/rant
this reminds me of that Perot skit on SNL ages ago:
“Now, see here, Preident Bush gets $200,000 a year – forget it! If I’m President, we get 0% growth, you don’t pay me nothing. 1% growth? Hell, a chimpanzee could run this country and make 1% growth! So you don’t pay me dime one. Got my own plane, don’t need Air Force One. State Dinners? I’ll pay it, it’s nothing to me, sand on the beach! Now, don’t worry about ol’ Ross Perot, I got $3 billion back at home.
Now, here’s the deal. Here’s what I’m trying to tell you. 3% growth in our economy, $120 billion growth in our GNP – I get a billion dollars. Now, think about it, that’s a bargain! You’re up $119 billion. I’m telling you, 2.99% growth, I don’t see a penny, not one red cent. But don’t feel sorry for me – I got $3 billion. I’m gonna be fine.
Now, this here’s a business proposition. Now, see, 4% growth, you pay me $20 billion. The way I see it, you’re ahead $140 billion, see? Now, this ain’t no golden parachute, this isn’t the President GM giving himself a big bonus when the company’s losing money sending jobs to Mexico. I get my money if and when you get yours.
Now, 5% growth, I get $50 billion. Everybody’s happy, see? See, that’s it, it’s all right there just lied out on the table, you can take it or leave it, I don’t care. I’m gonna do fine, I got $3 billion sitting in the bank.”
I read a fantasy novel once, where the leader of the government had his holdings liquidated and put in an account that grew or shrank in direct proportion to the economic performance of the country.
When someone was nominated for the post the first thing that happened, even before his candidacy was announced, was that government troops took the lucky candidate into custody so he couldn’t flee the country.
I know that this is all tongue and cheek but this falls into “the tragedy of the commons”. It’s not going to be in any one person’s best interests to create jobs (as no one person will have a dramatic impact on the employment rate) so everyone will instead focus on getting richer. This of course is why we need laws/governance, which is what the entire post is about.
The Tegan Isles in David Eddings’ Tamuli trilogy.
I thought I was the only one who read that one, MGK.
MGK has read everything. Everything.
Next post Subject: How can we stop the “Nahdha” Party to get money from Fundamentalists, & should Democracy be handed all that quickly to states that lived under dictatorship for roughly 23 years?
Most importantly how can the tunisian economy be brought back on tracks?
Would it be feasible to offer tax credits for every (real) job created?