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Title: Thomas Sowell - Back to the Future Part III Post by: Coach Hank Crisp on September 15, 2011, 09:21:52 AM http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2011/09/15/back_to_the_future_part_iii/page/full/
Quote What makes all this history so relevant today is that the same economic assumptions and political arguments which produced the absurdities of 1921 are still going strong in 2011. If anything, "the rich" have far more options for putting their money beyond the reach of the tax collectors today than they had back in 1921. In addition to being able to put their money into tax-exempt securities, the rich today can easily send millions -- or billions -- of dollars to foreign countries, with the ease of electronic transfers in a globalized economy. In other words, the genuinely rich are likely to be the least harmed by high tax rates in the top brackets. People who are looking for jobs are likely to be the most harmed, because they cannot equally easily transfer themselves overseas to take the jobs that are being created there by American investments that are fleeing from high tax rates at home. Small businesses -- hardware stores, gas stations or restaurants for example -- are likewise unable to transfer themselves overseas. So they are far more likely to be unable to escape the higher tax rates that are supposedly being imposed on "millionaires and billionaires," as President Obama puts it. Moreover, small businesses are what create most of the new jobs. |