Farmers' Advance, Bruce Bartlett:
I know something about this subject. Forty years ago, while working for New York Rep. Jack Kemp, I helped originate the Republican obsession with slashing taxes that came to be called “supply-side economics.” While I believe this theory played a useful role in economic theory and policy in the late 1970s and early 1980s, it has long outlived its usefulness and is now nothing but dogma completely divorced from reality.
It will be hard for many to believe, but once upon a time, Republicans genuinely cared about the budget deficit. From Dwight Eisenhower to George H.W. Bush, many of them were actually willing to raise taxes and oppose tax cuts to reduce it. And that includes Ronald Reagan, who cut taxes in 1981 but then supported 11 tax increases to offset a ballooning deficit.
And here's the crux of it all - this is what the GOP is all about.
The 1978 passage of California 's Proposition 13, which slashed the state’s property taxes, was critical in convincing Republicans that tax-cutting was more popular than deficit reduction. But to maintain some semblance of consistency, Republican intellectuals such as Irving Kristol and Alan Greenspan developed a theory called “starve-the-beast,” which says that spending will only be cut when tax cuts increase the deficit so much that there is no alternative.
If my goal is to dismantle the "welfare state" - to kill all that FDR Socialism Stuff - then the policy agenda pursued by Repubs for the last 60 years is almost exactly how I'd do it.
The short version is that we must be punished for not having the foresight to be born into better circumstances.
Short example: There will be about 5000 American deaths this year that will result in any kind of tax liability under the Estate Tax laws.
5000 out of about 2,600,000 in an "average year".
Less than 2% will pay anything in taxes on the wealth they inherit - and they pay taxes only on the amount in excess of $10,000,000.
If my estate is $50 million, then my poor pitiful survivors will have to figure out how to squeak by on a share of about $35,000,000.
I have no sympathy for legacy pukes who complain about paying the taxes that keep them from being roasted alive by the people who do the work and pay them rent.
