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Whither taxes?(on the right)(Column)
NEW YORK, JANUARY 4
AC-SPAN look-in on President Bush's challenge on tax reform featured two bright scholars, libertarian in outlook. Mark Henrie, from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and Doug Bandow, of the Cato Institute, acknowledged that Bush's reforms would not be shaped by fundamentalist models. Reformers in the past have focused on alternative approaches to tax reform radical in character. The first would eliminate the progresssive feature of the income tax--Rockefeller and his chauffeur would both pay 15 percent of their income. The second would eliminate the income tax itself, substituting a sales tax. Dick Armey wrote a book advocating a reform that drastic, and Milton Friedman many years ago made recommendations that deep.
It ain't going to happen, was the consensus on C-SPAN, so one lowers one's sights. What is it that could entice the administration and the congressmen who seek a substantial change in the laws?
In a recent conversation with Professor Friedman, he stressed the point that substantial reform cannot be expected for one reason: Congressmen are in Washington to craft tax laws that enhance the interests of their own constituents.
I wrote in a book 30 years ago that "tax reforms seek to improve on previous tax reforms by arching their provisions, like jungle leaves writhing for the sunlight, towards such rays of justice and equity as are discernible at any given moment of relative composure in American politics, when the pandemonium freezes, as for a photographer, for just long enough to permit one set of claimants to overshadow another. Thus a tax reform is born."
Never mind the verbal frosting, the analysis is undeniable. A tax reform is a new code enacted after massive wrestling and eye-gouging and threats, presented as a civilized enhancement of social policy. It is an assertion of justice, justice understood as a blend of considerations: the necessities of the state; the toleration of the body politic; the relationships of power among the affected interests; and ...
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Source: HighBeam Research, Whither taxes?(on the right)(Column)