Re: For the cost of a bag of flour

From: Mike Linksvayer (ml@gondwanaland.com)
Date: Thu Mar 06 2003 - 18:33:19 MST

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    On Tue, Mar 04, 2003 at 10:47:44PM -0800, Lee Corbin wrote:
    > The miracle is that a Huey Long or other pure mobocrat-democrat
    > hasn't been elected to the executive with a similarly composed
    > Congress. More than half the people now have absolutely no
    > incentive whatsoever to have lower taxes. On the contrary, the
    > higher the taxes, the better for them.
    >
    > I do not know to what to attribute this miracle. But I do
    > know that it won't last forever.

    Public Choice? I.e., concentrated interests trump diffuse interests.
    Net tax consumers don't have much incentive to lobby for higher
    taxes, as no one of them can expect to directly benefit from their
    efforts. The few who pay really substantial amounts have a far
    stronger, if still weak, individual incentive to lobby. What about
    all the rich leftists? Well, _top marginal_ tax rates have gone
    down, way down, over the past several decades throughout the
    industrialized world. Explain that fact. Well, I will -- rich
    leftists want everyone to pay through the nose (and the leftists
    get to control the booty, concentrated interests again, you see),
    rich non-leftists want at least their own taxes to be lower. The
    actions of each lead to what we have -- lower marginal rates,
    creeping overall tax burden -- but not pure mobocracy. Sounds good
    to me, but hey, it's never hard to pretend to explain the past.

    -- 
      Mike Linksvayer
      http://gondwanaland.com/ml/
    


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