Trust the Ferret, the Ferret is Wise

The following is the text of an email I sent to NPR's Marketplace show today, after they had a hack from the WSJ editorial page spouting nonsense straight out of the "Fairtax" book. Here's the article in question.

And my letter:
This morning, on the Marketplace Morning Report, you had Stephen Moore on, praising the benefits of a national sales tax.  His ideas and numbers come entirely from the book "FairTax" by Neal Boortz and John Linder.  And unfortunately, most of what he quoted is inaccurate or false.  A 23% sales tax would not replace all of the government income, the percentage was picked as near the maximum amount people would tolerate as a sales tax.  A national sales tax, despite his claim, would be extremely regressive and complex.  Most families who are out of the top 1% spend most of their income each year, which would make their net tax rate at LEAST 23%, plus the increases in cost that would come from this kind of tax.  Whereas the richest few don't spend all their money, which would make their net tax rate far below the 23% the rest of us would pay.  That hardly qualifies as "fair" by any stretch of the imagination.  And his idea of a $20,000 rebate for the sales tax spent?  That would be at least as complicated as the current income tax.  The rest of the work of tax collection would then be pushed on to the companies who sell products.  It would require just as much work, and we would still require the IRS to investigate cheats and other things.

His entire presentation was misleading at best, and outright false at worst.  The entire idea of a "fair" national sales tax is snake oil, designed to cover up for a gigantic tax cut for the rich and a tax hike for the rest of us, not any kind of serious policy suggestion.

Technically, it's tomorrow, but some quick numbers from Hilzoy over at Obsidian Wings

All numbers are in billions of dollars.

Total Receipts: 2,407
Total Outlays: 2654
Total Deficit: 248

Total Spent On Debt Service: 405.9

Just like an individual, there's plenty of good reasons for the government to run up debt some times. War, for example. (real wars, not this bullshit War On Some Terrorists) Or during recessions, to set the stage with infrastructure and jobs for the recovery. Tax cuts for the rich don't quite make the "good reason" cut, though. Especially since if you REALLY wanted to lower taxes, you could, say, take the surplus we had before Bush took office, and use it to pay down the debt, which would lower the interest payments. Or that money could be used for y'know, infrastructure, or teachers, or universal health care. Most of what we've spent it on hasn't been anything like that that would help the economy grow in the future, most of what we've spent it on is shit like the Iraq war.

But remember folks! The Republicans are the Party of Fiscal Restraint! (Which apparently means the party of "cut taxes and spend" which is what they've been...pretty much as long as I can remember, going back to Reagan etc, and definitely for as long as I could vote.)

And here's a short "oversimplified" video about the budget by Good Magazine

I think I know part of why Republicans are always for tax cuts. Aside from ideology, voodoo supply-side economics, or sincerely believing taxes are too high. It's political reasoning. Not just in the sense of "People don't like taxes, if we say we'll give them money, they'll vote for us." It's a longer term strategy than that, and one of the only reasons I can think of that explains why they keep cutting taxes when we're already so deep into a deficit.

See, the thing it does is it reduces the possibilities for the next President and Congress. Especially so if they're Democrats or *gasp* actual liberals. There are a lot of things liberals would like to see the government do. (No, Liberals are not "for government spending" as some weird abstract thing, liberals are for government spending that WORKS, and does certain things. Which happen to cost money. Tangent over.) But when the government is trillions of dollars in debt, and spending hundreds of billions of dollars it doesn't have, if you're sane, the first thing it has to do, before spending any more money, is pay off what it already owes. Nobody's going to be able to really suggest, say, sane national health care with a huge deficit. There's plenty of arguments that could be made for it, even with a deficit, but it leaves the Republicans a giant target to shoot at. (Okay, besides going "LOOK! COMMIES! NATIONAL HEALTH CARE IS COMMUNIST! SCARE SCARE!) The fact that the deficit is the Republican's fault will do absolutely nothing to prevent them from screaming about "Fiscal sanity" and other such buzzwords.

And on top of that, to fix all the problems left behind, taxes are going to have to go up. Even if it's just the most stupid and inefficients parts of the Bush Tax Cuts for His Rich Buddies that get undone, do you really think they'll pass up the chance to scream about "EVIL TAX AND SPEND LIBERALS!" Yeah, me neither.

Basically, the plan is to screw things up enough that when you lose and the opposition takes power, they have to put all their effort into fixing the disasters you left them, so they can't get anything they wanted to done. Then you blast them for the things they had to do to fix your screw-ups, and blast them for not getting the things they wanted to do done. And get elected long enough to reward your cronies and leave a nice big steaming pile of disasters waiting for the next time you get tossed out and the opposition gets in.

Or maybe I'm paranoid. But I don't think so.