Dissent Of The Day

A reader writes:

Did you really just argue that raising marginal tax rates by 12.4% on anyone making over $106,800 is merely "the closing of a silly loophole"?  Wow.  I'm all for closing tax loopholes, but across-the-board marginal rate increases are only loophole-closers in a world where you assume all money belongs to the government. 

This type of revenue raiser has serious detrimental consequences for labor supply and therefore for economic growth.  And you also call it "basically a big new tax on the rich."  You live in a high cost-of-living area.  Someone earning $156,800 would have a tax increase of $6,200 under this proposal.  If that person supports a family of four in the DC metro area on that salary, are they rich?  Certainly not.  Would a $6,200 tax increase on that person make it materially more difficult to support a family of four in the DC metro area?  Certainly yes.  It's hard to understand how someone who still claims the mantle of "conservative" could so cavalierly insist on adopting such a proposal.  And from past writings, it seems you also want to raise that person's marginal income tax rate from 25% to 28%.  Do you ever stop to think through the cumulative consequences of some of the left-wing policy proposals you endorse?

You could solve the Social Security problem by raising the retirement age, adopting progressive price indexing, and changing the measure of inflation used to calculate COLAs.  Three spending-side changes and no tax increases.  By the way, John Boehner endorsed those ideas yesterday and I didn't notice you giving him any credit for Republicans finally offering up real entitlement reforms.  Why the silence?

I didn't see it till this morning and my post defending him is here.