Now that the Democrats are back in control of Congress we are hearing calls for increasing taxes on business and the rich. A couple of senators, one of them a Republican, want to increase taxes on financial partnerships from 15 percent to 35 percent.
And then there are the genius Democrats in the House, according to Richard W.Rahn:
At the same time, House Democrats proposed an increase of 4.3 percentage points in the maximum individual tax rate.
This is at a moment when newly-installed Labour Party Prime Minister Gordon Brown in Britain has assured business and the rich in Britain that he won’t be killing the golden goose of low tax rates on financial businesses and the international “non-domiciled” rich.
What planet do these politicians live? Don’t they get it? Don’t they realize that the best way for them to get lots of lovely lolly to spend on buying votes is to make tax rates low across the board so that people expend their effort in making products and services and not on figuring out how to minimize taxes?
But some people never learn. One nice little train coming down the tracks is that business tax rates are much lower in places like Ireland and the eastern European countries like Estonia. Businesses have noticed.
And then there is Sarbanes-Oxley, the financial reform act that loads up US corporations with tons of paperwork.
Some optimists think that the left learned its lesson about the economy in the Reagan-Thatcher years. At times like this it seems hard to believe that they really “get it,” other than the need to get reelected.
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