Ivan Pavlov would be proud. President Obama suggests that a foolish tax cut for the perfectly comfortable be allowed to expire, and the Wall Street Journal's polemicist board starts yapping with Dickensian gloom about the friendless, tattered plutocracy's inevitable nightmare:
If the Bush tax rates expire as scheduled on December 31, rates on the top two income brackets will jump to 39.6% from 35%, and 36% from 33%. Add the scheduled return of income phaseouts for exemptions and deductions, and the rates go up another two-percentage points—to at least 41% and 35%.
Yes, those depressed brackets will jump--they'll leap, soar, hurl themselves by an extravagant 4.6 percentage points; a brutal, confiscatory oppression uninflicted on Noble Mankind since Mao's land reform. But add the "scheduled return" of those assorted phaseouts, which of course won't return, and the highest marginal rate would remain at 39.6 percent, which no Range-Roving Hampton V.I.P. has ever paid, and never will pay, which means the only thing that will have jumped was the WSJ to Ivan Obama's bell.
Yet the WSJ's tax demagoguery is but an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato compared to its catered ignorance of macroeconomics. I quote:
Businesses are sitting on their wallets as they wait out the tax, regulatory and election uncertainty. Mr. Obama's tax gambit will only increase that uncertainty and further retard investment and job creation.
You know what? "Ignorance" is the wrong word. No one in business journalism could be that clueless about why businesses decide to hire--which, ever since some pebble-polishing Australopithecus afarensis engaged another Australopithecus afarensis to help him meet expanding polished-pebble demand, has never varied.
So it isn't ignorance; just aggressive deceit, yap yap.
I don't know of a blogger who does literary allusion better than you. One sentence conjures the illusion of poor Mitt Romney and his hosts of billionaires and the editorial board of this newspaper draped in chains. If I'm not mistaken each link in those chains represented a sin committed along life's way. And these assholes just added a rapper sized length of bling to their own necks.
Posted by: Peter G | July 10, 2012 at 08:52 AM
The real brilliance of Obama's move yesterday was how he presented extending the tax cuts for the middle class. He pointed out, quite clearly, that both parties already agree that they should be extended, so let us do that now so the middle class doesn't have to worry about it as part of the election. As far as the tax cuts for those over $250,000, there is a disagreement, and let us have that discussion and see how the public views it come election time. But since we all agree on the extension for the middle class, why wait?
Now, we all know that the Republicans won';t agree to do that, but this then becomes a major campaign issue. Why won't the GOP support extending a tax cut?
And yes, the WSJ is not ignorant, but they are counting on most Americans being ignorant, which is actually a pretty safe bet.
Posted by: japa21 | July 10, 2012 at 09:07 AM
I think Obama wants the GOP to pull the trigger this time. he seems to be a hell of a poker player. Yes he folded last time; I suspect he really had to. But this time, he is not bluffing. Let the Bush tax cut die, and he get tax increases on his terms. plus, I think he wants to overhaul the tax code uduring the first year of his second term - as part of making giant strides toward a balanced budget before he leaves office.
Posted by: Robert Lipscomb | July 10, 2012 at 09:23 AM