From a psychological standpoint, the question is "Do people make choices based on the size of their bank accounts and what they have to pay the taxman?" If Charlie Rangel (D-NY) has his way, the answer will be a most assuredly yes as tax coffers grow by some trillion dollars.  You read that correctly. A T.r.i.l.l.i.o.n. dollars! That is the size of the taxman's bite should America be foolish enough to elect a "progressive" to the White House and leave the Democrats in charge of the two houses of congress. 

In an editorial in Friday's Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal we find this:

You can't say Charlie Rangel lacks for ambition. The House Ways and Means Chairman has been saying he wants to pass "the mother of all tax reforms," and even that doesn't do justice to the trillion-dollar tax baby he delivered unto Washington yesterday."

"No one thinks his plan has a chance of becoming law this year, but its beauty is as a signal of Democratic intentions for 2009. In proposing what would be the largest tax increase in history, Mr. Rangel is showing the world what he wants the tax code to look like if Democrats run the entire government." [emphasis added]

" WASHINGTON - The House's top Democratic tax writer outlined a $1 trillion plan Thursday to eliminate the alternative minimum tax and ease the tax burdens of most people by asking the rich and some companies to pay more. "

"Consider that single word "asking." Tax laws don't ask people to pay. There's no questioning involved, no opportunity for the taxpayer to answer when "asked." Laws require people to pay, command them, force them, coerce them, under penalty of imprisonment."

If we go all the way back to Marx and Engles, the basic idea was for the lower "classes" to rise up, throw off their shackles and take over the means of production so that all would be equal.  For the left in general, and the progressives in particular this has a great deal of meaning.  For it is equality of result that they seek, not equality of opportunity despite all their talk of "level playing fields."  Take education for example, buy claiming that so many were being disenfranchised by poor schooling (in spite of the fact that the term disenfranchise has little to do with "education" per se) the left was able to shame the rest of us into funding a massive education establishment with tens of thousands per student in more spending over a 12 year period with no appreciable return on the dollar.  In fact, there is more than enough justification to state catagorically, for a lot of reasons, not just dollars spent, that the quality of "learning" by today's youth is much less than it may have been in my daughters time, my time or my parent's time.  The same holds true for poverty spending.  Despite massive transfers of wealth from the more to the less fortunate, there are still significant problems with poverty relative to the rest of the nation. 

But, the progressives and the left continue to push their tax breaks for those that pay few if any taxes because tax policy buys votes, or, as Alexander Tyler put it because tax largess buys votes.  Well, what Tyler actually said is:

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse (bounty, gifts, donations, generous giving, etc.) from the public treasury. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by dictatorship.

Democracies progress through this sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence; from dependence back again to bondage.[emphasis added]"

So, what will it be citizens, sell your vote cheaply because you are envious of others, or insist on tax policy that makes sense, eliminates wasteful  spending and represents the true functions of government as opposed to curing every ill that comes down the proverbial pike?

UPDATE:  Greg Mankiw's Blog has some real numbers:

The bottom three-fourths of households, those making less than $75,000 a year, are not much affected. They each would receive a tax cut of about $100 per year.

The next 24 percent, those making between $75,000 and $500,000, would receive much more substantial tax cuts. Those in the $200,000 to $500,000 range, who are in the 96 to 99 percentile of the income distribution, would get a tax cut of about $3,600 per year.

The top 1 percent, those making over $500,000, would pay substantially more in taxes. Those making more than $1 million would see their tax bill rise by an average of more than $100,000.

Posted at 03:55 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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