Atlantic's Megan McArdle has a great piece in her blog about the proposed 5% tax surcharge on those earning incomes of $1M or greater to fund the jobs bill. Her gist (and I think she's right): let's grant the premise that you want to move towards this more progressive tax system. If true, what's next after this? If this 5% surtax pays for a program that we don't even have yet, it still fails to address the long-term structure issues facing the U.S. budget. This additional charge represents a transfer of wealth from top earners to lower-income ones. It would do nothing directly to shore up the entitlement programs (there could be smaller second- and third-order effects), and it would leave us no better off than we are today.
So, is there a 10% tax boost waiting in the wings to address the bigger issues we're facing?
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