How Progressive Tax Policies Hurt Families

"Before families can understand how tax reform would help them, they need to know how the current tax system is hurting them," writes Curtis S. Dubay in How Tax Reform Would Help American Families. He argues that that most families have no idea the damaging effects of the current progressive tax system, which are largely hidden from view.

Dubay catalogues the many problems in the progressive tax system, including (a) rates that are too high, that are too biased against saving and investment, and that wrongly pick winners and losers.

Showing how substituting the current investment/income tax system with a consumption tax system — i.e., the traditional flat tax, a consumed-income flat tax, a national retail sales tax, or a combination of these methods — would benefit families and the nation's economy, Dubay concludes:

Clearly, all of these effects would substantially benefit families. According to the Tax Foundation, the economy could grow as much as 15 percent more over 10 years because of tax reform. After those 10 years, the average American family’s wages would be almost 10 percent higher. That would mean an extra $5,000 in the pockets of families making $50,000 per year (roughly the median income in the U.S. today).  

Read his full Heritage Foundation report.


For those not familiar with how the current progressive tax system punishes work and investment — and pits neighbor against neighbor — here's a short YouTube video by PragerUniversity that explains it rather well:

Liberalism's Self-Serving View of Compassion

As the self-appointed champions of the "politics of kindness," liberal activists and publicists have "successfully weaponized compassion" and regularly wield that weapon against conservatism as the "politics of cruelty, greed, and callousness" when conservatives question the efficacy — or oppose expansion — of the welfare state. So argues William Voegeli in The Case Against Liberal Compassion.

Census Bureau data puts total federal, state and local government welfare spending at $3 trillion in 2011, or just under $10,000 per American, "much of it spent on the many millions of American who are nowhere near being impoverished, insecure, or suffering," writes Voegeli.

If the point of liberalism were to alleviate suffering, as opposed to preening about one's abhorrence of suffering and proud support for government programs designed to reduce it, liberals would get up every morning determined to reduce the proportion of that $3 trillion outlay that ought to be helping the poor but is instead being squandered in some way, including by being showered on people who aren't poor.

Delving into the definitions of "compassion," Voegeli points to the fatal flaws in the politics of kindness's focus on empathy at the expense of outcomes:

• Empathizers can "feel" better about "doing" something to alleviate another's suffering even when the sufferers do not "fare" any better.  The "politics of kindness" has little interest in accomplishing results for the sufferers.
• Empathizers can "acquire a vested interest in the study, management and perpetuation ... of sufferers' problems" for their own self-regard and esteem. When that happens, "the helpers and the helped are endlessly, increasingly co-dependent."
• Empathizers can begin to value compassion in terms of the self-validation it offers to them as good, decent and admirable people, wholly ignoring the inefficiency of programs in reducing the suffering of others. In the "politics of kindness," once they've voted for, given a speech about, written an editorial endorsing, or held forth at a dinner party on the salutary generosity of some program to 'address' someone's problem, their work is done, and they can feel the rush of their own pious reaction.

The question conservatives should be asking is, why aren't the "liberals who build, operate, defend, and seek to expand this [welfare] machine" outraged that it works so poorly to alleviate poverty and suffering?  Don't they care?

For more, read Voegeli's article in the October 2014 Imprimis or his book, The Pity Party: A Mean-Spirited Diatribe Against Liberal Compassion.

Conservative College Student Saira Blair Makes History

Eighteen-year-old conservative college student Saira Blair made history this week when she was elected, by a 63% to 30% margin, to the West Virginia House of Delegates. Fox News interviewed this articulate young woman on Fox & Friends:

Cracks in the Liberal-Progressive Coalition

Further signs of disaffection within the liberal-progressive coalition:

1. Three urban Chicago black men make the case that the true oppressors of the black community are liberal black leaders:


2. Comedian Bill Maher seriously challenges Ben Affleck's thinking about the "religion of peace:"


3. In deeply blue-state Oregon, voters overwhelmingly rejected a referendum that would have granted driver's licenses to illegal immigrants -- a measure Hispanic leaders were counting on to bolster the legalization/amnesty effort. As Mickey Kaus points out, several senators who voted for or supported "Chuck Schumer's Senate 'Gang of 8' legalization + immigration increase bill" lost their bids: 

Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas voted for the Gang of 8 bill. He’s GONE.

Sen. Kay Hagan of North Carolina voted for the Gang of 8 bill. GONE.

Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado voted for the Gang of 8 bill. GONE

Sen. Mark Begich of Alaska voted for the Gang of 8 bill. Almost certainly GONE

Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana voted for the Gang of 8 bill. She will probably be GONE after a January runoff.

Alison Grimes supported the Gang of 8 bill in Kentucky. DEFEATED

Michelle Nunn supported the Gang of 8 bill in Georgia. DEFEATED

Greg Orman supported the Gangof 8 bill in Kansas. DEFEATED

Bruce Braley supoorted the Gang of 8 bill in Iowa. DEFEATED

Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Mark Warner of Virginia voted for the Gang of 8 bill and BARELY SURVIVED against longshot challengers.

Do you sense a pattern in there somewhere? Schumer would probably be chairman of the lucrative Banking Committee if he hadn’t pushed his amnesty bill.

Even if the press intentionally misses this message, the pols and their advisers won’t. Do you think that, say, Oregon’s Democratic Senator Ron Wyden will be eager to vote on the Son of Gang of 8 next year? He’s up in 2016. Yesterday, his state’s voters rejected a bill to provide drivers’ licenses to illegals — it lost by a margin of 68 to 32, with more votes cast against it than were cast in favor of any candidate.  It lost big in Democratic areas and lost in Republican areas. I don’t think Wyden wants to vote for another “comprehensive” bill.

Harsanyi: Obama Era Myths Debunked

David Harsanyi debunks dubious assumptions about the Obama Era, among them:

• No, Voters Don't Hate 'Obstructionism' — "If anything, what we learned is that politicians are far more likely to be penalized by the electorate for passing unworkable and overreaching legislation that they are stopping it."
• There is No Revolt Against Washington (Yet) — American voters didn't oust all incumbents; they selectively punished only one party.
• Obamacare is Not a Political Winner — Approximately 36,000 anti-Obamacare ads were aired in Senate races in the three-week period from October 6 to 26. "It could be that the historic Republican gains had nothing to do with the most-discussed legislation in America. A far more plausible answer is that Obamacare has fathered two colossal wave elections by the GOP in four years. Which probably makes it the least popular federal policy in our lifetimes."

Lady-Parts Strategy Fail

Two women and one man who built their strategies almost exclusively around lady-parts failed to win public support yesterday in their bids for public office.

Sandra Fluke—the Georgetown University law student who became the face of the "free-contraception" movement—lost her bid for a California state senate seat, winning only 39 percent of the vote to her male opponent's 61 percent.

Wendy Davis—the face of War on Women messaging—garnered only 39 percent of the vote in the race for Texas governor.  Her opponent, Greg Abbott, even won the women's vote 52 percent to Davis's 47 percent.

U.S. Senator Mark Udall of Colorado—who was dubbed "Mark Uterus" during the election for his obsessive focus on lady-parts—won 44 percent of the vote to lose to his challenger, Cory Garner.

Another big loser was Planned Parenthood.  Writes Mollie Hemingway:

Planned Parenthood treated Mark Udall and Wendy Davis as their most important races, knocking on a million doors and making two million phone calls, they claimed, to drive votes to them.

A Good Day for Conservative Women

"Meet the new women," writes Ashe Schow @ the Washington Examiner:

• Senator-elect Shelley Moore Capito (W.Va.) — a sitting Congresswoman, she is the first woman to represent the state of West Virginia in the U.S. Senate.
• Senator-elect Joni Ernst (Iowa)-- the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from the state of Iowa.
• Congresswoman-elect Barbara Comstock (Va) — a sitting state house delegate, she defeated her opponent (and the Clinton machine that targeted her) in an increasingly liberal Northern Virginia district.
• Congresswoman-elect Elise Stefanik (NY) — the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, she faced multiple sexist remarks from her opponent and handled them with the grace and composure of a seasoned politician.
• Congresswoman-elect Mia Love (Utah) — she is the first black Republican woman in Congress, as well as the first Haitian-American representative.

Conservatives can also cheer a conservative gentleman: Senator Tim Scott (SC) — the first black senator elected to Congress from South Carolina is also the first African-American elected by popular vote in the South and only the fifth African-American elected ever, according to the Christian Science Monitor.