It is hard to understand politics if you are hung up on reality. Politicians leave reality to others. What matters in politics is what you can get the voters to believe, whether it bears any resemblance to reality or not.
Not only among politicians, but also among much of the media, and even among some of the public, the quest is not for truth about reality but for talking points that fit a vision or advance an agenda. Some seem to see it as a personal contest about who is best at fencing with words.
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The current controversy over whether to deal with our massive national debt by cutting spending, or whether instead to raise tax rates on “the rich,” is a classic example of talking points versus reality.
Most of those who favor simply raising tax rates on “the rich” — or who say that we cannot afford to allow the Bush “tax cuts for the rich” to continue — show not the slightest interest in the history of what has actually happened when tax rates were raised to high levels on “the rich,” as compared with what has actually happened when there have been “tax cuts for the rich.”
As far as such people are concerned, those questions have already been settled by their talking points. Why confuse the issue by digging into empirical evidence about what has actually happened when one policy or the other was followed?
The political battles about whether to have high tax rates on people in high income brackets or to instead have “tax cuts for the rich” have been fought out in at least four different administrations in the 20th century — under Presidents Calvin Coolidge, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush.
The empirical facts are there, but they mean nothing if people don’t look at them, and instead rely on talking points.
The first time this political battle was fought, during the Coolidge administration, the tax-cutters won. The data show that “the rich” supplied less tax revenue to the government when the top income tax rate was 73 percent in 1921 than they supplied after the income tax rate was reduced to 24 percent in 1925.
Because high tax rates can easily be avoided, both then and now, “the rich” were much less affected by high tax rates than was the economy and the people who were looking for jobs. After the Coolidge tax cuts, the increased economic activity led to unemployment rates that ranged from a high of 4.2 percent to a low of 1.8 percent.
But that is only a fact about reality — and, for many, reality lacks the appeal of talking points.
The same preference for talking points, and the same lack of interest in digging into the facts about realities, prevails today in discussions of whether to have a government-controlled medical system.
Since there are various countries, such as Canada and Britain, that have the kind of government-controlled medical systems that some Americans advocate, you might think that there would be great interest in the quality of medical care in these countries.
The data are readily available as to how many weeks or months people have to wait to see a primary-care physician in such countries, and how many additional weeks or months they have to wait after they are referred to a surgeon or other specialist. There are data on how often their governments allow patients to receive the latest pharmaceutical drugs, as compared with how often Americans use such advanced medications.
But supporters of government medical care show virtually no interest in such realities. Their big talking point is that the life expectancy in the United States is not as long as in those other countries. End of discussion, as far as they are concerned.
They have no interest in the reality that medical care has much less effect on death rates from homicide, obesity, and narcotics addiction than it has on death rates from cancer or other conditions that doctors can do something about. Americans survive various cancers better than people anywhere else. Americans also get to see doctors much sooner for medical treatment in general.
Talking points trump reality in political discussions of many other issues, from gun control to rent control. Reality simply does not have the pizzazz of clever talking points.
Wow! Sure glad we have trolls such as you to ferret out the really important mistakes in posts at NRO. Especially when they completely destroy the argument being made.
As with political talk versus reality, strawmen burn the brightest.
Not only are facts a pesky thing when it comes to taxes, I for one am waiting for someone to ask this question. What other Country on this globe allows for people to enter their Country at will, utilize social services and gain citizenship for their offspring with no strings attached. That fact seems to elude all of the "best and brightest".
The left's failure to comprehend human nature is embodied in its bumper sticker mentality.
The "War is not the answer" sticker says it all. What is the question this sticker is answering? Clearly, there are some questions for which war is the only answer.
Is it any surprise that with the US being the sole 1st world country that wasn't devastated by WWII, that even high taxes weren't able to supress the economic boom?
You also have to remember that in the 50's there were many tax deductions that are no longer available. As a result, even though the tax rate was 90%, almost nobody paid that rate. Today on the other hand, we have the alternative minimum tax that pretty much eliminates deductions for those in the upper and upper middle classes. (The AMT is not indexed to inflation, so it will soon be bitting into the middle class as well.)
This is kind of a weak article. Mr. Sowell says no one is reporting on how tax cuts can increase revenues, but that is not the case. Slate magazine did an article two weeks ago, entitled "Do Tax Cuts Ever Increase Government Revenues?", which addresses the examples he cites, but goes on to refute their relevance to today. Mr. Sowell's article would have been better if he presented a counter-point to Slate's article.
Also, everyone always brings up Canada and UK's dysfunctional systems when discussing heathcare, but no one discusses the other European countries that have more successful universal healthcare systems. For example, France. I know a number of French, and they are very happy with their healthcare, plus I've never seen any negative articles about the French system.
The "reply to comment" threading doesn't work if you're commenting on an article - only on blog posts. So, continue to give an "@so-and-so" with articles.
@Matt: If it's such a wonderful system, why don't those who support "universal healthcare" cite it? Also, anecdotal information about people being "happy" with the system is not data on whether or not it is a good system.
A point Mr Sowell doesn't make in *this* article (though I think he has made it before) is that life expectancy in this country is skewed a bit by counting all the premature infants we birth as part of the actuary. Most other places don't count infant deaths related to a premature birth as part of that, skewing our total life-expectancy down by several years.
As a Canadian I am pleased about two things. That we went through the headache of public healthcare in the 60's and 70's, and not today. And that our mortgage markets remain private.
Has any group in history been as spectacularly wrong as the Republican Party circa 1993?
"The impact on job creation is going to be devastating, and the American young people in particular will suffer a fairly substantial deferment of their lives because there simply won't be jobs for the next two to three years to go around to our young graduates across the country." - Dick Armey
"I believe hundreds of thousands of people are going to lose their jobs...I believe Bill Clinton will be one of those people." - Phil Gramm
"Do you know what? This is your package. We will come back here next year and try to help you when this puts the economy in the gutter...This plan will not work. If it was to work, then I'd have to become a Democrat..." - John Kasich
I notice that you don't mention that the debt reduction and job inceases happened AFTER the Republicans took over congress and imposed a supply side agenda on Clinton. Of course you leftists have been trying to credit Clinton with everything he fought to stop ever since it was proven to work.
If the Republicans stop the increase in the debt ceiling, cut spending, hold the line on taxes and the economy rebounds you'll be taking credit for that too.
