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Makes Sense to Me

Fascinating column over on the WSJ's Opinion Journal. Stephen Moore, formerly of the Cato Institute and the Club for Growth, wrote up an article on John McCain. Moore seems to still be under the sway of supply-side Kool Aid.

He can't for the life of him understand why McCain says: "I just thought it was too tilted to the wealthy and I still do. I want to cut the taxes on the middle class." Moore then says: "Even when I confront him with emphatic evidence that those tax cuts have been an economic triumph and have increased revenues, he is unrepentant and defends his [McCain's] 'no' vote by falling back on class-warfare type thinking: 'We have a wealth gap in this country, and that worries me'."

It's my contention that supply siders just keep missing the forest for the trees. Perhaps they are correct, as Moore says, that marginal rate reductions skewed toward the higher income groups are a "triumph" and "increased revenues." But that's a mere "efficiency" argument, not one of equity and fairness.

The fact is that if the poverty line is roughly $20K a year, and the personal exemption is roughly $3K, the tax BASE and effective marginal tax RATES over poverty are HIGHEST on the least well to do. That's simply unfair, IMO. And we are, in effect, taxing the poorest BACK INTO poverty. Moore, imbued as he seems to be in feel-good supply side-ism, just doesn't seem to see that. So he castigates McCain for talking common sense.

That McCain has been among the best on spending doesn't seem to impress Moore, perhaps because supply siders still don't seem to care about spending. And, while I may have some quibbles about HOW McCain arrives at his "green" positions, the fact remains that pollution is a negative externality that should -- by any free market theory that I know of -- be limited as much as possible.

Supply side is a step away from "let them eat cake." I say "run away from them as fast and as far as you can." Beneath all their effusive "positivism," their "hymnal" has become old, tattered, boring and -- most importantly -- counter productive.

-Robert Capozzi

Posted by Robert Capozzi on November 26, 2005 04:34 AM |

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