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Quin, let me see if I have this straight. We are going to hit corporations with a 6.9 percent payroll tax on all of the executive earnings above $500,000 on the grounds that such earnings are "excessive." But then when the liberals argue we should also apply to those taxes to the executives themselves, we are going to turn around and say that this compensation is not really excessive but actually quite reasonable. I'm not sure that's going to work, if we've already conceded such incomes are excessive.

It is even less likely to work if we are bragging about the additional revenues such a corporate payroll tax increase would achieve. Why? Because the liberals will be able to point to models showing even greater revenues after we tax the executives too. Whether a majority of voters will sympathize with executives making over $200,000 a year, much less over $500,000 a year, is a conversation worth having after we see how the public reacts to Democratic calls for ending the Bush tax cuts on the "rich."

Quin is right that conservatives should be concerned when income inequality, real and imagined, grows to a point that it undermines confidence in the free market system. And maybe these risks would be worth taking if we had already suceeded at, say, abolishing the corporate income tax. Taken in isolation, however, it seems a gamble that is unlikely to succeed.

topics:
Taxes