Tax Cuts vs. Tax Deferments
By J. goes ballistic on suburban Virginians:
“But Allen was apparently successful in convincing voters that their taxes would go up if Webb was elected to the Senate. Almost two-thirds of voters questioned in the exit polls who said taxes were an extremely important issue said they voted for Allen.
‘I really don’t want my taxes raised,’ said Anne Harrell, 39, who voted for Allen in her Annandale precinct. ‘It’s the money that’s driving me.’
I want to shake these people and say, are you really that stupid? Do you really think the multi-billion dollar defense supplementals are free? Do you really think the BioWatch/BioShield billions are somehow written off as not adding to the debt? Do you enjoy watching the federal government grow larger as your local services shrink? Do you really think this deficit spending will never be repaid by YOU or your kids’ taxes? Me, me, me, me, me. I need more money so my kid can play his Playstation 3 on the 52 inch screen television in my McMansion. Screw the rest of you. But you have to hand it to the Repub politicians. They can sell a bill of goods to their sheep people – at least a percentage of them.
Amen. There must be some way for progressives to repackage the concept of tax cuts as tax deferments; the notion that, without unpopular (indeed, probably impossible) spending cuts, tax cuts simply lead the country deeper into debt. Of course, wingnuts will remain attached to the fantasy of supply side economics, and thus have truthiness on their side. Nevertheless, the idea that the stuff that people like costs money isn’t exactly counter-intuitive, and is accepted in large parts of the industrialized world. As J. points out, there’s also an obvious moral component to the idea that we should pay for the things that we buy, one that ought to appeal even to the family values crowd.