Illusory Tax Cuts???

If it isn't one thing, its another, especially when it comes to Tax Cuts & the GOP. The Republicans rely on nothing in their bag of tricks more than tax cuts. Under Reagan and Bush II, we have seen reductions in marginal tax rates matched with exploding growth in government spending. This deficit spending allows Republicans to use hidden forms of taxation borrowing and inflation to fund all the militarism, corporatism and welfarism they want and buy votes from swing voters, all the while pretending to stand up for the taxpayer.

The rich are overtaxed........ BUT so are the poor and middle class. Hidden Republican tax increases end up hurting this last group the most, while their visible tax cuts do tend to help the rich more. If the Democrats and the left attack these schemes, or any component in them, the Republicans can turn to the voter and say: "Look! The Democrats want to raise your taxes! We understand the importance of tax relief; we respect the rights of the individual."

Of course, the Democrats, mainly those on the left do want to raise taxes on the rich. The left, in my opinion doesn't understand economics enough to know what's going on, and so the lefties complain only about the visible tax cuts as opposed to pointing out that the Republicans are in fact raising taxes on all of us through inflationary spending.

The Republicans get everything they want. They can give tax cuts to the rich — which is not in itself a bad thing, securing votes among the affluent as well as the helpless voters who prefer some relief to none. They can incite the left to respond with misguided, anti-capitalistic criticisms.

They can pretend to be the champions of economic liberty. And they can increase government spending to their heart's content, sticking us with the bill through the gradual devaluation of the dollar, all the while blaming deficits on the big-government Democrats.

Any reduction in taxes is a blessing. But some say the Republican tax cuts are not really tax cuts, they are simply illusions, tricks that substitute one form of wealth extraction with another, even more destructive one.

Where as the Democrats are arrogant and ignorant of economics, the Republicans know exactly what they are doing!

Another one I've heard is the tax fraud the Republicans love is distracting us with promises of simplifying the tax code or instituting a flat tax or national sales tax. Our goal should not be replacing one tax with another. Now our goal should be cutting the size of government, which is the only way to reduce the actual tax burden on the American people. But there is nothing wrong with implementing a "Flat Tax", something former Rep. Harold Ford, Jr (D-TN) has advocated.

But like it or not, the GOP have & will always win the argument on Tax Cuts because of the way they frame it to the American people, moreso that the democrats.