The Republican Tax Cuts

YESTERDAY I INTRODUCED The Liberty Scale, and promised to provide two examples of how it works: one from recent history and a second from the upcoming election in California.

It was a sort of nostalgic return to the good old days—the Middle Ages.

Today I'll provide the example from history:

You remember the famous Republican tax cuts, enacted during the Bush administration?

How would those rate on the Liberty Scale?

We decide by comparing the situation before the tax cuts with the situation after the tax cuts.

Before the tax cuts, this country had a multi-trillion dollar surplus.

It could easily have been used to decrease the deficit, fund social security, improve education, help fund health care reform, or even pay for the war in Iraq.

In whichever of those ways, or countless others, it was used, it would have made the average citizen's life more secure, and even if it had simply been allowed to accumulate, it could have been used to fend off the current recession without putting the nation, and our children, in deeper debt.

Instead, the Republicans decided to give that surplus to the wealthy—people who already had more than they needed—in the form of a tax cut.

Because of this, it couldn't couldn't be used to buttress Social Security, or to decrease the deficit, or to cover the cost of the Iraq war, or to fend off the recession and keep millions of ordinary citizens working.

So the wealthy became richer, and consequently more powerful, and the ordinary citizen's security and choices were cut dramatically.

This shift of power from the ordinary citizen to the wealthy looks like this on The Liberty Scale:

Not a particularly good rating.

If you remember, the Republicans sold this tax cut, at the time, as an economy-improving measure, and as an anti-tax measure.

Both of those sound pretty good, on the surface.

Who wouldn't like a healthier economy?

Who likes to pay taxes?

Lowering taxes sounds wonderful, of course, but it's relatively important whose taxes get lowered.

The Republican cuts were never intended to lower your taxes or mine.

Their argument, in its simplest form (which has been around since Reagan) was that if we give the wealthiest people more money, they would use it to create more jobs and give everyone raises.

This, they told us, would improve the economy over all, and benefit everyone.

How's that working for you?

I've pointed out elsewhere why lower taxes for businesses and business owners don't automatically translate into more hires and higher wages.

But the main point is that trickle-down economics, or as George Bush senior called them, voodoo economics, don't work.

The economy did not get stronger, wages did not get higher, unemployment skyrocketed, and it could be argued that these tax cuts were part of the reason, though I won't do that here.

The entire argument was simply an excuse to take money, and power, away from the government, where it could benefit the average citizen, and give it to the wealthy and powerful.

It was a sort of nostalgic return to the good old days—the Middle Ages.

Next time: a current proposition on the California ballot...