l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 Dr. Sowell推荐Stephen Moore的《到底谁最公平？》；如果每个美国人都读了这本书
，奥巴马会输的很惨...
If everyone in America had read Stephen Moore’s new book, Who’s the
Fairest of Them All?, Barack Obama would have lost the election in a
landslide.
The point here is not to say, “Where was Stephen Moore when we needed him?
” A more apt question might be, “Where was the whole economics profession
when we needed them?” Where were the media? For that matter, where were the
Republicans?
Since Who’s the Fairest of Them All? was published in October, there was
little chance that it would affect this year’s election. But this little
gem of a book exposes, in plain language and with easily understood facts,
the whole house of cards of assumptions, fallacies, and falsehoods that
constitute the liberal vision of the economy.
Yet that vision triumphed on Election Day, thanks to misinformation that was
artfully presented and seldom challenged.
The title “Who’s the Fairest of Them All?” is an obvious response to
liberals’ claim that their policies are aimed at creating “fairness” by,
among other things, making sure that “the rich” pay their “fair share”
of taxes. If you want a brief but thorough education on that, just read
chapter four, which by itself is well worth the price of the book.
A couple of graphs on pages 104 and 108 are enough to annihilate the
argument about “tax cuts for the rich.” These graphs show that, under both
Republican president Calvin Coolidge and Democratic president John F.
Kennedy, high-income people paid more tax revenues into the federal treasury
after tax rates went down than they did before.
There is nothing mysterious about this. At high tax rates, vast sums of
money disappear into tax shelters at home or are shipped overseas. At lower
tax rates, that money comes out of hiding and goes into the American economy
, creating jobs, rising output, and rising incomes. Under these conditions,
higher tax revenues can be collected by the government, even though tax
rates are lower. Indeed, high-income people not only end up paying more
taxes, but a higher share of all taxes, under these conditions.
This is not just a theory. It is what hard evidence shows happened under
both Democratic and Republican administrations, from the days of Calvin
Coolidge to John F. Kennedy to Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. That hard
evidence is presented in clear and unmistakable terms in Who’s the Fairest
of Them All?
Another surprising fact brought out in this book is that the Democrats and
Republicans both took positions during the Kennedy administration that were
the direct opposite of the positions they take today. As Stephen Moore
points out, “the Republicans almost universally opposed and the Democrats
almost universally favored” the cuts in tax rates that President Kennedy
proposed.
Such Republican Senate stalwarts as Barry Goldwater and Bob Dole voted
against reducing the top tax rate from 91 percent to 70 percent. Democratic
congressman Wilbur Mills led the charge for lower tax rates.
Unlike the Republicans today, John F. Kennedy had an answer when critics
tried to portray his tax-cut proposal as just a “tax cut for the rich.”
President Kennedy argued that it was a tax cut for the economy, that changed
incentives meant a faster-growing economy and that “a rising tide lifts
all boats.”
If Republicans today cannot come up with their own answer when critics cry
out “tax cuts for the rich,” maybe they can just go back and read John F.
Kennedy’s answer.
A truly optimistic person might even hope that pundits would go back and
check out the facts before arguing as if the only way to reduce the deficit
is to raise tax rates on “the rich.”
If they are afraid that they would be stigmatized as conservatives if they
favored cuts in tax rates, they might take heart from the fact that not only
John F. Kennedy but even John Maynard Keynes argued that cutting tax rates
could increase tax revenues and thereby help reduce the deficit.
Because so few people bother to check the facts, Barack Obama can get away
with statements about how “tax cuts for the rich” have “cost” the
government money that now needs to be recouped. Such statements not only
promote class warfare, to Obama’s benefit on Election Day, they also
distract attention from his own runaway spending behind unprecedented
trillion-dollar deficits.
— Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. © 2012
Creators Syndicate, Inc. | a*******1
发帖数: 1554 | 2 大家都知道税收跟税率成抛物线关系，而不是单调关系，极端处的0%和100%都收不到税
，中间有个点能收到最多税。。。。现在的税率过低，处于提高税率能提高税收的区间
，所以应该加税。。。
共和党总统艾森豪威尔把最高边际税率定在91%，民主党总统肯尼迪减到70%后税收上升
，民主党总统克林顿把边际税率提高到39.6%之后实现财政盈余，共和党总统小布什减
税后财政赤字飙升。我们知道税率从90%降到70%能提高税收，从36到39.6%也能提高税
收，因此不妨折中一下，年入25万美金以上部分征50%的税试试。
设想一下，如果美国加重税，google想迁出美国，它能去哪？任何国家都没有美国这么
多码工，土共的计算机教育比美帝差了几条街，烙印那种脏乱差的地方，严重影响工作
热情，效率大降，加上语言、文化的制约，结论是google哪儿都去不了，还是只能乖乖
待在美国。如果老板选择关掉企业，那么他的收入是0；如果开下去，虽然税重，但还
是有收入，所以还会开下去。。。。。 |
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