Larry Summers Has Thoughts
By 
The man who urged more toxic waste to be dumped on Africa and the man who based in part on that intellectual toxicity became a major advisor to both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama has thoughts about taxes. It starts with Summers linking to some debate he had with Emmanuel Sanz, with the usual blather about how he is totally right and everyone else he ever interacts with is totally wrong.
Last week, I had the chance to debate Emmanuel Saez at the @PIIE. Here is a video of the discussion https://t.co/YJdjV4c4Th and a series of tweets explaining my disagreements with Saez and Zucman’s approach; and proposing alternatives to a singular focus on wealth taxation.
— Lawrence H. Summers (@LHSummers) October 26, 2019
And then his worries about making rich people pay taxes gets extra weird.
Forcing the wealthy to spend could boomerang. If the wealth tax had been in place a century ago, we would have had more anti-semitism from Henry Ford and a smaller Ford Foundation today.
— Lawrence H. Summers (@LHSummers) October 26, 2019
Um…….
OK, first, I’d love to hear how Henry Ford could be MORE anti-Semitic. As a refresher, here’s Ford being honored by the Nazi government in 1938.
I mean, I guess Ford didn’t personally go out and shoot Jews. So I guess that’s a different between Ford’s actual anti-Semitism and what he could have been? I mean, I’m not Larry Summers, Supergenius, but this seems a bit stretched? I also love the Ford Foundation remark. It’s pretty clear that the Mellon Foundation was definitely worth Andrew Mellon playing a huge role in screwing over millions of people and then after that being Secretary of teh Treasury during the Great Depression and doing nothing about it. Andrew Carnegie’s charity is definitely worth all the workers he killed in his steel mills. Etc. Why would want to solve problems today when rich epople can later dole out a little bit of money here and there? Why, we definitely shouldn’t tax Mark Zuckerberg today because 100 years from now, whoever is left on this cinder of a planet might get a few drops of rare fresh water or some exotic fruit called a tomato, i.e. the elite classes in Soylent Green from the Zuckerberg Foundation.
But again, I am not a supergenius like Larry Summers so what do I know.
Can someone launch Summers into the sun? https://t.co/LA6b6fsT9m
— Erik Loomis (@ErikLoomis) October 26, 2019
In conclusion: