Commenting on National Review's Corner blog about this Wall Street Journal article regarding how some congressional Democrats from wealthy districts are opposing soak-the-rich tax increases, Cato Institute scholar Vernonique de Rugy wrings her hands about how 14 of the nation's 25 richest districts are represented by Democrats, up from five in 1995. "What were people thinking? Didn't they see it coming? How is this possible?" The assumption (shared by those Democratic congressmen) is that for rich people to support higher taxes on the rich is a violation of the law of physics, because what could be more important to them than their immediate economic self-interest? Democrats make a similar assumption when they express bafflement about how relatively poor social conservatives can vote for conservative Republicans. (Not that the New York Republican Party does anything to secure the social conservative vote.)
In New York, every Republican opposed this year's tax increase on the wealthy, even though the top rate for a single filer prior to the increase kicked in at a mere $20,000. The state added two additional brackets, at $200,000 and $500,000, with a top rate of 8.97 percent. It's only a temporary increase, but it likely will and should be made permanent given the coming and continued budget squeeze. In fact, there is clearly room for a couple more brackets at the top, say at $750,000 and $1 million, to bring in more revenue.
It's reasonable for opponents to raise questions of efficacy, because at some point it would become counterproductive to tax the mobile rich too much and drive them out of state. But there's little evidence that we're close to that point, which you can tell from the ridiculous arguments conservatives make against taxing the rich, e.g. on pseudo-religious grounds of morality (see the columnist Cal Thomas) or on grounds of unfairness to our most productive citizens (which is what talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage say, failing to acknowledge the obvious implication that some twit of a pop star is more valuable than a heroic soldier paid many times less).
The GOP undermines its other positions (including cutting or capping other taxes) by opposing taxes on the rich, because it's not as if Republicans are proposing realistic spending cuts that would mean we don't need the revenue. Instead, they subscribe to a bastardized version of fiscal conservatism which merely opposes tax increases -- only vaguely and rhetorically opposing big spending while (like the Democrats) actually supporting it. The Republican position on income taxes also makes their attempts to be populist look fake, and, as the Journal article shows, is not even winning over rich voters. It is right in line with the philosophy of Karl Marx that man is merely an economic animal, and if the New York GOP keeps it up it may end up like the Communist Party in the dustbin of history.
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