February 17^th

 

There are no right wing columnists presenting their ideas in today’s paper so I will present some ideas of my own.

Today we make a suggestion about war: we should pay as much as we can for it as we fight it. Since 2001 we have been in two long and costly wars and the top tax brackets have not increased a bit. Of course the fabulists at The Heritage Foundation are telling us that the rich pay more in taxes than ever before. Of course they do and that’s because we have lots more rich people so in aggregate they pay more in taxes. Isn’t that analysis clever?

Grover Norquist, an anti-tax fanatic, tries to get all incoming legislators to sign a pledge not to raise taxes. Regardless of domestic needs or existential threats Norquist’s followers will not raise taxes. This, he believes, will throttle government programs. It does no such thing because instead of raising taxes to pay for expensive things like wars the government just borrows more money to pay for them. This possibility has perhaps eluded Norquist. We will leave the wisdom of his movement to history students desperate for a thesis topic.

Most of our previous wars were on a pay as you go basis. Of course they were much too expensive to pay for all at once so we had a kind of installment plan. We paid as much as we reasonably could at the time and continued to pay after the war was over. For example the marginal tax rate during WW 1, WW 2, The Korean War and the Vietnam War averaged 79 percent; in addition there were excise taxes on many luxury or near luxury goods. The Bush wars of the last ten years saw a very different model. The top marginal tax rate under these fiscal conservatives averaged 35 percent and while excise taxes continued they were on far fewer goods. These fiscal conservatives have turned to borrow and spend; exactly what they berate sections of the public for doing.

Everyone complains about the debt we are handing off to our grandchildren but no one wants to increase the tax rates so that this burden is eased. In spite of all the armed conflict this country has engaged in Congress hasn’t actually declared war since WW 2. I propose that any armed conflict involving US armed forces result in an immediate increase in the top marginal tax rate to 85 percent and corresponding increase in lower brackets; and that these increases continue until any debt acquired to pay for the conflict is paid in full. If this becomes law we will have far fewer armed conflicts and a much lower national debt.