Daily Archives: 3 November 2014

Another Case for Tax Reform

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British Prime Minister had this to say Thursday (if that link doesn’t work, the Daily Mail has a good summary and paraphrase):

We know the economic case for cutting taxes: in a competitive world we cannot afford to carry on as a bloated, high-taxing, welfare-heavy nation.

We have to direct our resources to incentivising work through tax cuts and not incentivising welfare through extra benefit entitlements.

We have to fight the notion that you can endlessly suck more taxes out of businesses and bite the hand that feeds…. For me, the simplest way to help with living standards is this: allow people to take home more of their own money.

And

Every single pound of public money started as private earning. Every million in the Treasury represents a huge amount of hard work: early morning alarms, long commutes, hours spent on the factory floor, the office, the hospital ward, or the classroom.

The Wall Street Journal rightly offered kudos for this awakening, but they missed a key point.

[T]he case for tax cuts is as much about freedom as it is about spurring growth.

True enough. But freedom is what allows those spurs to exist. Freedom is what allows economic growth to occur. Freedom is what allows prosperity.

Democrats’ Myths

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The Wall Street Journal published a list of 10 Democratic Party myths that they’ve been pushing during recent campaign seasons. Here are a couple of their dog-whistle myths to keep in mind as you go to the polls tomorrow.

Raising the minimum wage helps the poor. The president wants to increase the federal minimum wage to $10.10 from $7.25, with the tagline “Let’s give America a raise.” The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the hike would cost 500,000 jobs, one blow to the low-wage earners it claims to help. Employment aside, only 18% of the earnings benefits of a $10.10 hike would flow to people living below the poverty line, according to analysis from University of California-Irvine economist David Neumark. Nearly 30% of the benefits would go to families three times above the poverty line or higher, in part because half of America’s poor families have no wage earners. Minimum-wage increases help some poor families—at the expense of other poor families.

And

Voter ID laws suppress minority turnout. More than 30 states have voter-ID laws, which the left decries as an attempt to disenfranchise minorities who don’t have identification and can’t pay for it. Yet of the 17 states with the strictest requirements, 16 offer free IDs. The Government Accountability Office this month released an analysis of 10 voter-ID studies: five showed the laws had no statistically significant effect on turnout, four suggested a decrease in turnout (generally among all ethnic groups, though percentages varied), and one found an increase in turnout with voter ID laws in place.

And again: go vote.