Paul Caron says that David Cay Johnston (pictured) has published U.S. Tax Rates: A Bargain Hunter’s Dream?, 128 Tax Notes 333 (July 19, 2010):
In this article, Johnston examines new data showing that taxes are the biggest bargain in America, something no one would know from the tenor of the debate in Washington and on talk shows.
I read the article and fired off this email to Mr. Johnston in response:
Dear Mr. Johnston,
Regarding your Tax Notes article U.S. Tax Rates: A Bargain Hunter’s Dream.
I am afraid that you, like most of the self-anointed pro-big government intelligentsia, have entirely missed the point of the anti-tax movement.
People don’t oppose taxes merely because they want to keep more of their money (many tax cut conservatives give great sums of money to charity every year), but rather they oppose them because the federal bureaucracy is inefficient, incompetent and corrupt.
It’s the wastefulness of taxes that people oppose, not the concept of taxes.
Here’s a short hypothetical that may help you see better:
Let’s say you have a twelve year old boy whom you give a monthly allowance of $100. Every month he flushes $30 down the toilet. Later he comes to you and demands that you raise his allowance to $120. Would you do it?
If so, you’d be an enabler rather than a responsible parent.
Why, then, would you ever agree to give the federal government a raise?
The feds, like the spendthrift boy, will never seriously and satisfactorily address the waste problem as long as it knows that enablers like you will support its attempts to take more money from American citizens.
Even a three year old knows that if you keep blowing air into a balloon, the balloon will burst. Government is like that. But at least with a balloon you can let some air out. Historically, temporary expansions of government have become permanent expansions of government.
If Shakespeare was right and the past is prologue to the future, our government will eventually burst.
Finally, in classic I-am-holier-than-thou form, you close with a questioning of the motives of those who do not see the world the way you see it (emphasis is mine):
So why all the rhetoric about taxes, rather than jobs, better pay, and how universal healthcare as a public service would cost less and help more? Answering that requires asking yourself one question about how the tax debate is being framed and which facts get trumpeted or ignored: Who benefits?
To suggest that those who agree with you are noble and altruistic and those who disagree with you are selfish and greedy is arrogant and childish. It brings to mind the words of another modern-day Manichean philosopher who issued the following warning to the world after America had been attacked by terrorists on 9/11:
You are either with us or against us.
Sincerely and self-interestedly yours,
Peter Pappas
6 responses so far ↓
1 A Response to David Cay Johnston « Kill All The Lawyers Blog // Jul 21, 2010 at 9:49 am
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2 David Cay Johnston // Jul 21, 2010 at 9:25 pm
Thank you for your commentary, though I think you missed the point entirely and choose to go off on a tangent that makes you feel good about what you believe, but that fails to suggest any deep thinking.
My column is intended to provoke people to think deeply about that which they assume to be true, especially when facts show that widely held beliefs are at odds with well established facts.
For 40 plus years I have gone wherever the facts go, and often I found that the facts and what I had imagined to be true were not in accord.
Sadly, experience has taught me that most people have trouble with facts that do not reinforce what they believe or wish was true. Many people retreat into their comfort zone, especially those whose views are freighted by any ideology, rather than ponder and reconsider, coming up with explanations that explain to themselves and others the reasons they are holding fast or changing their views.
And, to be clear, I am not part of your imagined “self-anointed pro-big government intelligentsia,” which anyone who has read my best-selling books Perfectly Legal and Free Lunch knows.
Free Lunch, for example, is an effort to defend competitive markets against all of the efforts by big businesses to rig markets, obtain hundreds of billions of dollars in annual subsidies, restrain competition and in the process both shift and increase tax burdens. I name names in showing companies and industries that derive all of their profits from stealthy gifts of taxpayer money, all of it to the detriment of entrepreneurs who are not eligible for this welfare.
The point of my column was to show that, since 1979, of all the expenditure items the government tracks, when measured against increased income, federal and state taxes grew the least. Indeed, they grew far less than any other category of personal expenditure.
But, ignoring these salient facts, you mock the question I pose asking people to think about the reasons that the rhetoric about tax burdens is not supported by the facts.
Democracy will fail, and our nation will fail, if we ignore facts. You may disagree with my interpretation of the facts and if you do I hope you become part of a robust debate about the issues I raise. But approaching this the way you do does not improve anyone’s understanding of the issues about distributing the burdens of our republic, without which their is no wealth.
As my latest column showed, for each dollar of increased median comprehensive family income spending on housing and property taxes and health care went up much more than income, spending on basics like electricity rose somewhat less, spending on new vehicle sonly half as much as income.
And taxes? State taxes rose 40% as much as income, federal taxes 34% as much.
And I analyze several sets of data in several ways, taking care to present a rounded use of the numbers.
And so I asked why the focus on taxes as a heavy burden when the facts show they are a much lighter burden today than in 1979.
My column was not about the tangent you go off on, but about relative changes in how people spend and showed that the smallest increases by far are on taxes.
So how about staying on point, rather than going off on a tangent. How about addressing the issue:
Since total federal taxes rose only 34 percent as fast as comprehensive after-tax income from 1979 to 2007, while other costs rose much more, why is there so much rhetoric about heavy tax burdens?
And you might also ask yourself about that poll Fox News commissioned, but did not report on as best I can tell, the second Fox News poll I have found in recent weeks whose findings were at odds with what Fox reports.
3 Aiden // Jul 23, 2010 at 7:24 am
Dear Mr. Johnson,
In your original article, you claim that a key meta-story in the news is that people are suffering from “high taxes, confiscatory taxes, rising taxes, wasted taxes, and unfair taxes”. Then you claim that this meta-story is basically about “excessive taxation”.
However, even if taxes are not excessive, they may still be confiscatory, wasted, and unfair, and possibly even rising.
Hence, assuming your first claim about the key meta-story is true, your second claim about the key meta-story is false.
Then, your rebuttal to Pappas’s response to your article, you berate Pappas for bringing up the issue of the wastefulness of taxation, on the grounds that it is tangential to your main theme.
But only your second claim implies that it is tangential; your first implies that it is perfectly relevant.
Given that you make in quick succession two contradictory claims about what is and is not relevant to your theme, you might be a little more gracious about criticizing the theme of Pappas’s rebuttal.
Yours sincerely,
Aiden Gregg
4 Peter // Jul 23, 2010 at 8:50 am
Aiden,
You are clearly not a deep thinker.
LOL
5 Truth and Taxes: David Cay Johnston’s Response & My Rejoinder // Jul 23, 2010 at 1:34 pm
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6 Truth & Taxes: Letting Bush Tax Cuts Expire = Tax Increase // Jul 25, 2010 at 8:49 pm
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