The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : Statists vs. Non-Statists

Text Size

Statists vs. Non-Statists

By Joseph Lawler on 7.13.11 @ 3:20PM

Michael F. Cannon picks up on a telling quote in a recent Ezra Klein article:

A non-statist would never write something like this:

We had a big surplus. It was time to do something with it. Brad DeLong, a former Clinton administration official and an economist at the University of California at Berkeley, didn't want to see the surplus spent on tax cuts. He wanted to see it spent on public investments.

To a statist, all resources belong to the state. The government doesn't tax 40 percent of your earnings; it magnanimously spends the other 60 percent on you. When the government reduces your taxes, it isn't taking less money from you; it's spending more of its money on you.

This will become an increasingly important distinction as Congress grapples (as it eventually will, hopefully) with overhauling the tax code and reforming explicit and implicit subsidies. Unfortunately, I don't think there's any Republican on the national stage who is able to articulate the free market case as well as Mitch Daniels did at CPAC:

We Hoosiers hold to some quaint notions. Some might say we "cling" to them, though not out of fear or ignorance. We believe in paying our bills. We have kept our state in the black throughout the recent unpleasantness, while cutting rather than raising taxes, by practicing an old tribal ritual -- we spend less money than we take in.

We believe it wrong ever to take a dollar from a free citizen without a very necessary public purpose, because each such taking diminishes the freedom to spend that dollar as its owner would prefer. When we do find it necessary, we feel a profound duty to use that dollar as carefully and effectively as possible, else we should never have taken it at all.

Before our General Assembly now is my proposal for an automatic refund of tax dollars beyond a specified level of state reserves. We say that anytime budgets are balanced and an ample savings account has been set aside, government should just stop collecting taxes. Better to leave that money in the pockets of those who earned it, than to let it burn a hole, as it always does, in the pockets of government.

View all comments (9) | Leave a comment

Floyd Looney| 7.13.11 @ 4:07PM

Mitch Daniels already shot himself in the foot with conservatives. I don't think he will ever be seen as a viable Presidential candidate again.

Mike 3/505| 7.13.11 @ 5:02PM

We say that anytime budgets are balanced and an ample savings account has been set aside, government should just stop collecting taxes"

And the return should be based on contribution, not the same amount for everyone.

PattyMor| 7.13.11 @ 5:02PM

Ah, but the grand poobahs have such better uses for our money than we have. There is cash for clunkers, cash for caulkers, housing loans for people who can not pay them back, turtle tunnels,
ethanol subsidies which make our gas less effective and our food more expensive, windmills and solar panels which need fossil fuel back up plants, penis washing in Africa and welfare for those who refuse to work. Isn't uptopia wonderful?

Occam's Tool| 7.13.11 @ 7:37PM

No, Daniels forgot that the complete package is a Social AND a Fiscal Conservative.

fashion| 7.14.11 @ 4:03AM

It is horrible that the government tax 40 percent of your earnings. But it is common in my country.

Clint| 7.14.11 @ 5:42AM

"Debt Ceiling Betrayal Petition to:
My Representative and Senators
Whereas: The American people put the Republicans back in power in 2010 to stop the runaway spending in Washington, D.C.; and
Whereas: Republican House Speaker John Boehner may yet give in to Barack Obama's "debt ceiling deal" that involves a trillion dollars in tax increases and includes mostly phony spending and tax "cuts;" and
Whereas: Virtually every time deals have been cut in Washington, D.C., massive tax hikes follow, while the promised spending cuts never come; and
Whereas: House Republicans would be foolish to go for this ploy and be taken in by the Obama Administration, only to leave the American taxpayers on the hook yet again for more out-of-control government spending;
Therefore: I demand that you stand up to the political establishment by rejecting any business-as-usual compromise on the debt ceiling. Instead, I urge you to join Ron Paul in signing the "Cut, Cap, and Balance" pledge immediately if you have not yet done so."

Rosetta Stone | 7.14.11 @ 5:53AM

good post.

Tenn Slim| 7.14.11 @ 8:48AM

Opine
For years there has been an undercurrent of a Tax Revolt.
Nationally, I think we are close.
General revenues are very close to being locked in. W2 forms, FICA forms, automatic sales tax methods are in place.
A true tax revolt would change the entire Debt, BUdget, conversation. Once the 2010 Old Geezer networks realize that the end is almost on us, due to ineptness, outright statism, then the surge will overwhelm the conversation. There are mulitiple means to simply not pay. An aroused Old Geezer Tax Revolt would tip the balance.
end

yisong| 10.29.11 @ 2:43AM

Three Row Roller Bearings are constructed with three independent rolls of rollers to handle a combination of axial, radial and overturning moment loads. http://www.1stbearing.com