“The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter– it’s the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”
- Mark Twain -
If we don’t confiscate all of the wealth of the super rich the deficit will increase next year. Anyone opposing such confiscation of wealth, therefore, wants the deficit to rise.
This is the kind of strawman argument folks like Lori Montgomery of the Washington Post are trotting out to support tax increases on the rich.
Listen to what she says in her article GOP Plan to Extend Tax Cuts For Rich Adds $36 Billion to Deficit (emphasis added):
A Republican plan to extend tax cuts for the rich would add more than $36 billion to the federal deficit next year — and transfer the bulk of that cash into the pockets of the nation’s millionaires, according to a congressional analysis released Wednesday.
It may be Congress’ analysis, but the language used to describe it is Montgomery’s.¹ And, as Mark Twain said, words matter.
Montgomery says that the portion of a taxpayer’s income that the federal government does not take in the way of taxes is a transfer by the government to the taxpayer?
Orwell would be proud.
In English – a language Montgomery appears to eschew – taxation means the transfer of money from a taxpayer to the government. When the government lowers taxes it does not transfer money to taxpayers, but rather, it merely lessens the amount of money to be transferred by the taxpayer to it.
In other words, money is earned by taxpayers and belongs to taxpayers. They are compelled by law to transfer a portion of their money to the government.
I find it disturbing that folks like Montgomery want Americans to believe that money earned by taxpayers belongs to the government, and that the portion of that money the government lets them keep is a transfer from the government to them.
I’ll give you an analogy to help you better understand Montgomery’s twisted logic:
Say Montgomery bakes an apple pie and cuts it into eight equal slices. I take three slices from the pie and let her keep the remaining five slices. Later, I return a slice to her.
If she is consistent in her argument, Montgomery would have to thank me for giving her a slice of pie.
A six year old will tell you this is butt-backwards; that it is I who should thank Montgomery for giving me two slices of pie.
Make no mistake about it, the tax-the-rich crowd wants to create in the minds of Americans the notion that conservatives want to line the pockets of millionaires even though they know full well that we just want to stop politicians from picking the pockets of its most productive citizens merely because it is politically palatable to do so.
Always remember this: People who constantly clamor for more taxation of the rich do so for the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks:
Because that’s where the money is.
Footnotes:
¹ I recognize the possibility that Ms. Montgomery may have merely been careless with her wording. But she is a professional writer and, therefore, it is more likely that she chose her words carefully knowing full well the import of their meaning.
9 responses so far ↓
1 Knox Marlow // Aug 13, 2010 at 1:33 pm
Amen! It is very frustrating that people who know better (or ought to know better) argue that tax cuts represent a distribution from the government to “the rich.” Good post
2 Brian // Aug 13, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Nice piece. I am getting tired of the argument that calls tax deductions and preferences “tax expenditures.”
3 Peter // Aug 13, 2010 at 5:41 pm
Brian,
Thanks. Me too.
4 Peter // Aug 13, 2010 at 5:44 pm
Thanks Knox.
5 Aiden Gregg // Aug 14, 2010 at 4:12 pm
Suppose I earn X.
Suppose some party then takes, with my grudging consent (although if I don’t agree, that party is going to take it anyway), a fraction of X, but in return provides me benefits commensurate with that fraction of X.
Does *all* of X still belong to me? In particular, do I own all of that fraction of X the party has taken, but for which I have been amply–albeit semi-voluntarily–compensated?
If not, could you make the case that the confiscating party, if it were now to reduce the amount it takes, but not the benefits it gives, could be giving me something, rather than merely taking less of what us mine?
Does the argument that the party is taking what is mine depend only on the fact that it is not adequately compensating me for the fraction it is taking? Even if I were adequately or more than adequately compensated, would the party still be taking what is mine, unless my consent were full and complete?
(Note that, even if the party did compensate me adequately, I might not realize it, so my lack of consent might be subjectively rational, but objectively irrational.)
6 Peter // Aug 15, 2010 at 7:36 am
Aiden,
The point is not that benefits are given for the money taken, but rather, that there are those who believe that whatever money you earn belongs to the government and that the government merely lets you keep some of it out of the goodness of its heart.
By the way, if against my will you took $2,000 from my bank account and then came to my house and painted it, you still stole $2,000 from me.
7 Paul Krugman: Anti-Taxers have Destroyed America’s Infrastructure // Aug 15, 2010 at 8:20 am
[...] [...]
8 Steven // Sep 23, 2011 at 2:53 pm
When the government spends money the debt becomes an obligation on all. The money to pay for things has to come from somewhere, so if it does not come from one person then it comes from the others. To the extent that the taxes give a break to one person then that increases the obligation of everybody else. Therefore,by extending tax cuts for the rich the money has been transfered to the rich.
One argument is that the money should never have been spend and the debt should never have been incurred. Even if true, it does not change the argument.
I suppose the other argument would be to push off the debt so that nobody evern pays it. Even then, the same argument still applies to whatever portion of the debt is paid.
9 Peter // Sep 23, 2011 at 4:00 pm
Steven
No. The money has been returned to the rich. In our progressive system they already paid more than their share.
Tax cuts may be unfunded, which means that nobody paid for them. They may be funded by spending cuts, in which case you have to look at what was cut to determine who paid for it. If military spending was cut, we all pay for it, including the rich i.e. they get money back, but they also get less national defense. If entitlement programs are cut, then the middle class and the poor are paying for it.
The important thing to remember is this: If person A is paying $100,000 into the system and Person B is paying $1 and we decide that this is unfair and person A deserves a cut so that he only pays, say, $90,000 and Person B now pays $10,000, it would be absurd to say that Person B paid for Person A’s tax cut. The truth is, Person A had been paying for Person B prior to that.
You aren’t privileging the rich by making them pay LESS of an unfair share than they were previously paying no matter what the class warfarists say.
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