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Townhall
An
Overdue Book
by Thomas Sowell
Nov 28, 2012
If
everyone in America had read Stephen Moore's new book,
"Who's The Fairest of Them All?", Barack Obama would have lost the
election in a landslide.
The
point here is not to say, "Where was Stephen Moore when
we needed him?" A more apt question might be, "Where was the whole
economics profession when we needed them?" Where were the media? For
that
matter, where were the Republicans?
Since
"Who's The Fairest of Them All?" was published in
October, there was little chance that it would affect this year's
election. But
this little gem of a book exposes, in plain language and with easily
understood
facts, the whole house of cards of assumptions, fallacies and
falsehoods which
constitute the liberal vision of the economy.
Yet
that vision triumphed on election day, thanks to
misinformation that was artfully presented and seldom challenged. The
title
"Who's The Fairest of Them All?" is an obvious response to liberals'
claim that their policies are aimed at creating "fairness" by, among
other things, making sure that "the rich" pay their "fair
share" of taxes. If you want a brief but thorough education on that,
just
read chapter 4, which by itself is well worth the price of the book.
A
couple of graphs on pages 104 and 108 are enough to annihilate
the argument about "tax cuts for the rich." These graphs show that,
under both Republican President Calvin Coolidge and Democratic
President John
F. Kennedy, high-income people paid more tax revenues into the federal
treasury
after tax rates went down than they did before.
There
is nothing mysterious about this. At high tax rates, vast
sums of money disappear into tax shelters at home or is shipped
overseas. At
lower tax rates, that money comes out of hiding and goes into the
American
economy, creating jobs, rising output and rising incomes. Under these
conditions, higher tax revenues can be collected by the government,
even though
tax rates are lower. Indeed, high income people not only end up paying
more
taxes, but a higher share of all taxes, under these conditions...
Read
the rest of this article at Townhall
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