January
14, 2003 8:45 a.m. Tax
the Kids
Go
ahead, pay for it tomorrow.
n a screed
against President Bush's tax-cut plan, Ronald Brownstein of the Los
Angeles Times makes the perfectly sound point that most American wars
have been financed, in part, by tax increases. He uses the example of
the estate tax, which was regularly imposed to finance wars and then abolished
once peace broke out. (Until, that is, World War One, when the happy habit
of postwar repeal was shaken.) This time, however, President Bush is cutting
taxes during a war. This strikes Brownstein as immoral. He writes, "It
all amounts to Americans voting themselves a tax cut and letting their
children pay for defending the country through a larger national debt."
Brownstein's history,
while accurate, is a little misleading. Any increase in federal debt from
the present and contemplated hostilities is chump change compared to the
truly massive debt left over at the end of World War Two. Federal debt
is running at one-third of GDP today; in 1946, the debt was ten percent
larger than the economy.
The assumption that
tax cuts today mean higher taxes tomorrow (paid for by the children) is
unwarranted. There's certainly no one-for-one trade-off. Tax cuts can
create wealth, and can lead the federal government to restrain its spending.
Both effects would reduce the amount of taxes that would be necessary
in the future to pay for today's tax cuts.
Anyway, what's wrong
with asking the children to pay for the national defense once they've
grown up? If the pattern of American history holds, they will be richer
than we are. Good liberals, in particular, should favor shifting the tax
burden into the future on redistributive grounds. The war is, moreover,
being fought not least for the benefit of these children. These two points
are not unrelated. Assuming that the war goes well, the world will be
a more prosperous place in 2050 because America fought it. And a 52-year-old
American in that year will be better off for its having been fought, even
if he has to pay slightly higher taxes as a result. We can leave the tab
to our children with an easy conscience.
WILLIE
SUTTON LIVES
The subhed to an article in The Nation: "Money Is Needed for
Social Programs. And the Rich Have More Than Their Share."
SCOOP
JACKSON DOESN’T
Those conservatives who perpetually hope for the re-emergence of a hawkish
faction in the Democratic party have been pinning their hopes on Sen.
Joe Lieberman. But it looks like Lieberman's not going to oblige. On North
Korea, he's
taking the standard Democratic line: Kim Jong Il's regime is acting
up because Bush "bullied" it, and the Clinton administration's
1994 deal with it was a smashing success. It's hard to see how these views
square with the senator's attempts to position himself to Bush's right
on national security. But if that's what he believes, he should by all
means say so. In any case, the Scoop Jackson wing of the party has lost
its brightest feather. Hawks will now have to make do with Dick Gephardt.
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n a screed
against President Bush's tax-cut plan, Ronald Brownstein of the Los
Angeles Times makes the perfectly sound point that most American wars
have been financed, in part, by tax increases. He uses the example of
the estate tax, which was regularly imposed to finance wars and then abolished
once peace broke out. (Until, that is, World War One, when the happy habit
of postwar repeal was shaken.) This time, however, President Bush is cutting
taxes during a war. This strikes Brownstein as immoral. He writes, "It
all amounts to Americans voting themselves a tax cut and letting their
children pay for defending the country through a larger national debt."
