by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
NRO’s The Corner<\/i><\/p>\n
Not Quite the Clinton Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n In all the talk about returning to the Clinton income-tax tables, I have been confused on one small point: As I remember the Gingrich-Clinton years, the tax raises were followed by spending freezes and caps, and some time later we had balanced budgets, however fragile and temporary.<\/p>\n That compromise of the 1990s now seems to be forgotten: If the Clinton tax tables led to a balanced budget, why does no one believe they will this time around? Why is there so much additional talk of the need for novel VAT taxes, healthcare surcharge taxes, and caps off income subject to FICA payroll taxes?<\/p>\n In other words, why is there no talk about the second half of the equation, applying an immediate, across-the-board spending freeze?<\/p>\n What makes the return to the Clinton tax code (if it happens and if it affects everyone equally) really unfortunate is that we are going to be taxing in an L-shaped \u201crecovery\u201d and yet will make little, if any, progress in balancing the books, given that borrowing is still seen as needed \u201cstimulus\u201d and won\u2019t be reined in.<\/p>\n We can see the downward spiral; California and Greece are the models. Spending keeps rising, taxes creep up in response, deficits rise, shrill warnings about the need to cut defense, policing, and other necessary government services begin to be heard, and more taxation is passed to catch up with spending \u2014 until the next crisis.<\/p>\n Taxes for Thee but Not for Me<\/strong><\/p>\n Two thoughts on the Senator Kerry embarrassment. Was it really a \u201cjudgment call\u201d? It seems to me a pretty open-and-shut case of tax evasion, in the manner of the Timothy Geithner\u2019s illegal write-offs and FICA avoidance. When an average taxpayer tries to avoid paying sales tax on his car or boat by the sort of machinations that Kerry employed, is the state franchise tax board (or, in some cases, the IRS) so silent?<\/p>\n Second, there is a disturbing pattern here: Those who are most adamant in pressing for higher taxes, rather than emphasizing spending cuts, themselves seem to be the most ready to cheat on their own taxes \u2014 think of a Dodd, Geithner, Kerry, or Rangel. That narrative of hypocrisy ties into a larger and disturbing trend: Could it be that leftist populists who rail against the unfairness of the system and activists who call for radical political and lifestyle changes are motivated by a need for psychological exemptions for their very concrete indulgences?<\/p>\n Surely if one were to collate what John Edwards has said about two Americas, what Al Gore has said about frivolous consumption and its effect on the environment, and Tom Friedman\u2019s eloquent warnings about unsustainable Western lifestyles, one would never imagine the thousands of square footage in living space that each sees as essential to his own existence.<\/p>\n The Kerry Yacht as a Teachable Moment<\/strong><\/p>\n By now, almost everything imaginable has been said about Senator Kerry\u2019s docking of his new $7 million yacht in Rhode Island instead of Massachusetts, thus avoiding\/postponing some $500,000 in state taxes. Here is some postmortem analysis:<\/p>\n 1. Once again, a liberal proponent of higher and more redistributive taxes (e.g., Daschle, Geithner, Rangel) has acted antithetically to what he professes. In his 2004 campaign, Kerry alleged near-treasonous behavior (\u201cBenedict Arnold\u201d) on the part of companies that relocated out of the country to seek lower taxes. The psychology of this hypocrisy is hard to figure: Does the technocratic guardian class believe that, as an overseeing\u00a0nomenklatura<\/em>, the laws should not apply to them? Does loud support for taxes in the abstract serve as some sort of surrogate ethical compensation for avoiding them in the concrete? Or is there an assumption that such elites won\u2019t get caught (remember, Geithner and Kerry only paid up when public attention turned to their avoidance)?<\/p>\n 2. Economics 101 suggests that, had Massachusetts either no or very low taxes regarding yachts, it might have recaptured some of the revenue that is now Rhode Island\u2019s.<\/p>\n 3. Is the liberal wing of the Democratic Party now the choice of the very rich who see no dichotomy between their own enjoyment of the highest life and public remonstration against the wealthy? A pattern has certainly emerged: Yachtgate, the populist Clintons\u2019 multi-million-dollar wedding extravaganza, John \u201cTwo Americas\u201d Edwards\u2019s mansion, green\/live-within-our-limited-means Al Gore at home in Montecito and various other digs, and our \u201cspread the wealth\u201d and \u201credistributive change\u201d president\u2019s fondness for celebrity-studded banquets, golf, and exclusive vacation hideaways.<\/p>\n 4. At some point, all the soak\/attack-the-rich talk from the Obama administration (e.g., the lectures about going to the Super Bowl, the caricatures of Las Vegas, the attacks on executives and surgeons) begins to clash with all this conspicuous consumption, especially given that Obama has made a trope of \u201cat some point you\u2019ve made enough money\u201d (a point that someone capable of buying a $7 million accessory has reached, perhaps). What Kerry calls a family \u201cinvestment\u201d would, in intrusive liberal orthodoxy, appear to others as an indulgence at a time when unemployment lingers near 10 percent and we are struggling to get out of recession.<\/p>\n 5. Note how all this wealth was made: John Edwards made it summarizing personal-injury cases against doctors; Al Gore by hyping a global-warming Armageddon and then offering psychological and concrete ameliorations for it; John Kerry by marrying someone who had married someone who had inherited it. This suggests that some of the most influential of the rich Democratic elite don\u2019t have much experience with the role of low taxes or less regulation in fostering profitable, capital-creating enterprises.<\/p>\n \u00a92010 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s The Corner Not Quite the Clinton Solution In all the talk about returning to the Clinton income-tax tables, I have been confused on one small point: As I remember the Gingrich-Clinton years, the tax raises were followed by spending freezes and caps, and some time later we had balanced budgets, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[565],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-mj","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2590,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-psychology-of-debt-obamas-rendezvous-with-political-reality\/","url_meta":{"origin":1383,"position":0},"title":"The Psychology of Debt: Obama’s Rendezvous with Political Reality","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 19, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Debt Matters Over the last two decades it became an article of popular faith that budget deficits did not matter that much. Conservatives began to talk of annual red-ink in vague terms of percentages of the gross domestic product rather than in real billions\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "July 2009"","block_context":{"text":"July 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/july-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":173,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-kingdom-of-fairness\/","url_meta":{"origin":1383,"position":1},"title":"The Kingdom of Fairness","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 12, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services We are still borrowing more than $1 trillion a year. Barack Obama has added more than $5 trillion to the national debt in just his first term alone. Such massive borrowing is unsustainable. Someone somehow at some time has to pay it back.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Debt and Deficits"","block_context":{"text":"Debt and Deficits","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/debt-and-deficits\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1034,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/why-not-soak-the-rich\/","url_meta":{"origin":1383,"position":2},"title":"Why Not Soak the Rich","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 13, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services For the last two years, $250,000 in annual income has been an arbitrary line in the sand of a renewed class war. Those above it must have their income taxes raised. Those below it are deemed more virtuous and so deserving of a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "December 2010"","block_context":{"text":"December 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/december-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2895,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/now-obama-tells-us\/","url_meta":{"origin":1383,"position":3},"title":"Now Obama Tells Us?","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 16, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Imagine that last fall before being elected, Barack Obama had outlined the positions he has embraced since being inaugurated as president. An honest campaign speech could have gone something like this: \"As we approach Election Day, the American people should not waste the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "March 2009"","block_context":{"text":"March 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/march-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2914,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamafusion\/","url_meta":{"origin":1383,"position":4},"title":"Obamafusion","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 8, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Why is Wall Street worried? \u2014 Let us count the ways. 1) The proverbial Wall Street capitalists believe that, with new federal income tax rates, the removal of FICA ceilings, increases in capital gains rates, decreases in deductions, and simultaneous tax raises, not only\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "March 2009"","block_context":{"text":"March 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/march-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2534,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/its-the-philosophy-stupid\/","url_meta":{"origin":1383,"position":5},"title":"It’s the Philosophy, Stupid","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 15, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Advancing a Free Society The Democrats\u2019 position in the negotiations to raise the debt limit and deal with runaway government debt can be summarized in one mantric phrase: the rich must \u201cpay their fair share\u201d in taxes. White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer, for example, said\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. 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