I have an item up over at the Current on Chelsea Clinton and the "Monica Question." And while you're there, be sure to check out Reihan on congestion pricing and New York secession.
« The Young Right | Main | Taxes As If Families Mattered » The Personal Is Political10 Apr 2008 03:23 pm Comments (7)
It's not a terrible idea, and it's vastly preferable to the odious plutocratic flat-tax pimping of the WSJ. But your platform (by sheer coincidence, I'm sure) amounts to social democracy for upper-middle class Catholic families. The primary difference between your plan and progressive reforms intended to boost the working class is that the working class actually needs a boost. Increasing the child credit, in the context of raising the standard deduction and making the income tax brackets more progressive, makes a great deal of sense. In the context of slashing estate and dividend taxes, one might get the crazy idea that the purpose of this reform is to benefit well-to-do families who are skimping on travel abroad to send their kids to Harvard, rather than families who are skimping on health insurance in order to pay rent. 
Sorry, the prior comment was intended for the thread on Ramesh's article.
L.P., don't you think a tax policy that promotes responsibility is, well, responsible? I sympathize with helping the working class, and I think these policies promote the responsible behavior that, statistically, lead to better lives, and not just because of short-term tax benefits.
Ferrell -- Slashing the estate and dividend taxes will promote responsible behavior? With a policy designed to increase the ranks of idle upper-class children who won't need to work a day in their lives? Speaking as someone who has struggled to make ends meet, I can assure you that raising the standard deduction and reducing the base income tax rate are practical policies to help people get off of public subsidies and into the workforce. Indulging the yacht set with millions of dollars in tax-free income and delivering condescending lectures to the less fortunate about how greatly they will be rewarded for investing money they don't yet have seems like a really lousy way to encourage responsible behavior. Especially in the wake of an economic crisis brought on by people who were suckered by smooth-talking market mavens into investing money they didn't yet have.
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OK, so parents shouldn't be "double billed". Does that mean the rest of us get a tax cut that relieves us for paying for schools, SCHIP and all other child welfare programs? Once we start going this route (which reminds me of the worst identity group spoils system of the Left) where do we stop? I'm OK with seeing dependent exemptions and the EITC bumped upward, but let's leave Social Security out of it shall we? Parents pay their FICA, I'll happily pay school and other taxes.
Posted by JonF | April 10, 2008 6:26 PM