For all the talk about a change in the politics of the Left signaled by the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama, I’d expect to see change rather than the same class-based stupidity.
“In our new economy, there is no shortage of new wealth,” he told the Tax Policy Center. “But wages are not keeping pace…This isn’t the invisible hand of a market at work. It’s the successful work of special interests. For decades, we’ve seen successful strategies to ride anti-tax sentiment in this country towards tax cuts that favor wealth, not work. And for decades, we’ve seen the gaps in wealth in this country grow wider, while the costs to working people are greater.”
I wish that Sen. Obama meant the perverse nature of tax incentives and the inefficient complexity of the tax code because that would be a conversation worth pursuing. Instead, he’s doing little more than imitating John Edwards.
Sen. Obama seems to believe that U.S. income taxes are regressive, so he’s advocating $80 billion in tax cuts for “work”. This is in a system in which the bulk of the burden is already carried by the group allegedly “favored” so much in Washington. That $80 billion has to come from somewhere, so that’ll be from “wealth”.
I guess I should be grateful such a rebel is running for high office.
For specific analysis of Sen. Obama’s plan, I recommend this entry by Chris Edwards at Cato @ Liberty. For example:
Third, Obama proposed special tax breaks for seniors, which would take 7 million more elderly completely off the tax rolls. But that would inject a very unfair element of age discrimination into the tax code. Old folks are already taking young folks to the cleaners in terms of federal fiscal policy. Obama would make the injustice worse, yet he had the chutzpah to claim in his tax speech: “It’s time to stand up to the special interest carve outs.”
Vote for Sen. Obama and you too can have other people pay your share.