l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 Dr. Sowell：在布什减税之后，富人实际上交的税款总数更多，而且占收得税款比例更
高，因为他们的
收入随着经济上升而增加
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=39573
Brass Oldies
by Thomas Sowell
10/26/2010
Classic songs from years past are sometimes referred to as "golden oldies."
There are political fallacies that have been around for a long time as well.
These might be called brass oldies. It certainly takes a lot of brass to
keep repeating fallacies that were refuted long ago.
One of these brass oldies is a phrase that has been a perennial favorite of
the left, "tax cuts for the rich." How long ago was this refuted? More than
80 years ago, the "tax cuts for the rich" argument was refuted, both in
theory and in practice, by Andrew Mellon, who was Secretary of the Treasury
in the 1920s.
When Mellon took office, there was a large national debt, the economy was
stagnating, and tax rates were high, though the tax revenues were still not
enough to cover government expenditures. What was Mellon's prescription for
getting out of this mess? A series of major cuts in the tax rates!
Then as now, there were people who failed to make the distinction between
tax rates and tax revenues. Mellon said, "It seems difficult for some to
understand that high rates of taxation do not necessarily mean large revenue
for the Government, and that more revenue may often be obtained by lower
rates."
How can that be? Because taxpayers change their behavior according to what
the tax rates are. When one of the Rockefellers died, Mellon discovered that
his estate included $44 million in tax-exempt bonds, compared to $7 million
in Standard Oil securities, even though Standard Oil was the source of the
Rockefeller fortune.
For the country as a whole, the amount of money tied up in tax-exempt
securities was estimated to be three times as large as the federal
government's expenditures and more than half as large as the national debt.
In short, huge amounts of money were not being invested in productive
capacity, such as factories or power plants, but was instead being made
available for local political boondoggles, because this money was put into
tax-exempt state and local bonds.
When tax rates are reduced, investors have incentives to take their money
out of tax shelters and put it into the private economy, creating higher
returns for themselves and more production in the economy. Andrew Mellon
understood this then, even though many in politics and the media seem not to
understand it now.
Mellon was able to persuade Congress to lower the tax rates by large
amounts. The percentage by which tax rates were lowered was greater at the
lower income levels, but the total amount of money saved by taxpayers was of
course greater on the part of people with higher incomes, who were paying
much higher tax rates on those incomes.
Between 1921 and 1929, tax rates in the top brackets were cut from 73
percent to 24 percent. In other words, these were what the left likes to
call "tax cuts for the rich."
What happened to federal revenues from income taxes over this same span of
time? Income tax revenues rose by more than 30 percent. What happened to the
economy? Jobs increased, output rose, the unemployment rate fell and incomes
rose. Because economic activity increased, the government received more
income tax revenues. In short, these were tax cuts for the economy, even if
the left likes to call them "tax cuts for the rich."
This was not the only time that things like this happened, nor was Andrew
Mellon the only one who advocated tax rate cuts in order to increase tax
revenues. John Maynard Keynes pointed out in 1933 that lowering the tax
rates can increase tax revenues, if the tax rates are so high as to
discourage economic activity.
President John F. Kennedy made the same argument in the 1960s -- and tax
revenues increased after the tax rates were cut during his administration.
The same thing happened under Ronald Reagan during the 1980s. And it
happened again under George W. Bush, whose tax rate cuts are scheduled to
expire next January.
The rich actually paid more total taxes, and a higher percentage of all
taxes, after the Bush tax rate cuts, because their incomes were rising with
the rising economy.
Do the people who keep repeating the catch phrase, "tax cuts for the rich"
not know this? Or are they depending on your not knowing it?
Dr. Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and author of
"Applied Economics" and "Black Rednecks and White Liberals." |
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