NYTimes Opinion: Springtime for Hitler

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger () ibd com>
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2002 11:35:38 -0700
To: Dave Farber IP <dave () farber net>, Dewayne Hendricks
<dewayne () warpspeed com>

This article does point out how the current political "discourse" has become
one of aggressive lies, spin and repeated untruths instead of true
discussion and compromise that a democracy requires.


Springtime for Hitler
By Paul Krugman
New York Times | Opinion
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/18/opinion/18KRUG.html

Friday, 18 October, 2002

You may recall that George W. Bush promised, among other things, to change
the tone in Washington. He made good on that promise: the tone has certainly
changed.

As far as I know, in the past it wasn't considered appropriate for the
occupant of the White House to declare that members of the opposition party
weren't interested in the nation's security. And it certainly wasn't usual
to compare anyone who wants to tax the rich -- or even anyone who estimates
the share of last year's tax cut that went to the wealthy -- to Adolf
Hitler.

O.K., maybe we should discount remarks by Senator Phil Gramm. When Mr. Gramm
declared that a proposal to impose a one-time capital gains levy on people
who renounce U.S. citizenship in order to avoid paying taxes was "right out
of Nazi Germany," even the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance
Committee, Charles Grassley, objected to the comparison.

But Mr. Grassley must have thought better of his objection, since just a few
weeks later he decided to use the Hitler analogy himself: "I am sure voters
will get their fill of statistics claiming that the Bush tax cut hands out
40 percent of its benefits to the top 1 percent of taxpayers. This is not
merely misleading, it is outright false. Some folks must be under the
impression that as long as something is repeated often enough, it will
become true. That was how Adolf Hitler got to the top."

For the record, Robert McIntyre of Citizens for Tax Justice -- the original
source of that 40 percent estimate -- is no Adolf Hitler. The amazing thing
is that Mr. Grassley is sometimes described as a moderate. His remarks are
just one more indicator that we have entered an era of extreme partisanship
-- one that leaves no room for the acknowledgment of politically
inconvenient facts. For the claim that Mr. Grassley describes as "outright
false" is, in fact, almost certainly true; in a rational world it wouldn't
even be a matter for argument.

You might imagine that Mr. Grassley has in hand an alternative answer to the
question "How much of the tax cut will go to the top 1 percent?" -- that the
administration has, at some point, produced a number showing that the
wealthy aren't getting a big share of the benefits. In fact, however,
administration officials have never answered that question. When pressed,
they have always insisted on answering some other question.

But last year the Treasury Department did release a table showing, somewhat
inadvertently, that more than 25 percent of the income tax cut will go to
people making more than $200,000 per year. This number doesn't include the
effects of estate tax repeal; in 1999 only 2 percent of estates paid any
tax, and half of that tax was paid by only 0.16 percent of estates. The
number also probably doesn't take account of the alternative minimum tax,
which will snatch away most of the income tax cut for upper-middle-class
families, but won't affect the rich.

Put all this together and it becomes clear that, sure enough, something like
40 percent of the tax cut -- it could be a bit less, but probably it's
considerably more -- will go to 1 percent of the population. And the
administration's systematic evasiveness on the question of who benefits from
the tax cut amounts to a plea of nolo contendere.

Which brings us back to the new tone in Washington.

When Ronald Reagan cut taxes on rich people, he didn't deny that that was
what he was doing. You could agree or disagree with the supply-side economic
theory he used to justify his actions, but he didn't pretend that he was
increasing the progressivity of the tax system.

The strategy used to sell the Bush tax cut was simply to deny the facts --
and to lash out at anyone who tried to point them out. And it's a strategy
that, having worked there, is now being applied across the board.

Michael Kinsley recently wrote that "The Bush campaign for war against Iraq
has been insulting to American citizens, not just because it has been
dishonest, but because it has been unserious. A lie is insulting; an obvious
lie is doubly insulting." All I can say is, now he notices? It's been like
that all along on economic policy.

You see, some folks must be under the impression that as long as something
is repeated often enough, it will become true. That was how George W. Bush
got to the top.


-- 
Robert J. Berger - Internet Bandwidth Development, LLC.
15550 Wildcat Ridge Saratoga, CA 95070
408-882-4755 Fax: 408-490-2868 rberger () ibd com http://www.ibd.com


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