Editorial/A New Deal
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
Editorial A New Deal R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. -Let us form a pact. Any politico running for high public office who insists on assuring us of his "compassion" or "sensitivity" or any related virtue...
...A surgeon laboring over so desperate a case would consider shooting the patient to rescue him from his misery...
...Doubtless the Founders would dismiss the entire covert operation as unconstitutional, and some of our brighter pols must suspect as much...
...Yet these speculations drift off a bit from my point of focus, which is economics and government foolishness...
...A reduction in marginal tax rates would restore the incentive to save, to make production-increasing investments, and to work...
...Now just how much concern have our pols shown for the Bill of Rights or the Constitution in recent years...
...Editorial A New Deal R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...Now all the politicoes of compassion and sensitivity are promising to apply their very big hearts to the economic problems of the middle class...
...After a decade of this maily middle-class people are now in a position where it is either no longer possible or no longer profitable for them to make more money...
...In their frustration 27 states have called for . a constitutional convention to balance the budget...
...What is more, today's poor have a harder time getting jobs, because the compassionate pols have outlawed low-paying unskilled jobs, leaving the poor more dependent than ever on government and- worst of all-harassed and idiotized by social workers...
...Yet it has superseded the economic wisdom of yesteryear and brought with it all the inflation earlier economists prophesied and more...
...And all the new services that were ushered in with the late Great Society are botched and bleeding the nation white...
...Further, Kemp is now crossing the country attempting to bring to the average Yank an awareness of supply-side economics...
...The Wonderboy talks of "vigorously monitoring all pricing decisions," despite the fact that he apparently was not very good at monitoring the economic activity of his one peanut farm...
...For two decades or so suave and oily pols have been, with increasing frequency and ardor, assuring us that they possess all the saintly qualities of Mother Theresa, arid today a cross section of skid row denizens could better conduct the public business than these popinjays...
...Truth be known, a skid row contingent in the 96th Congress would raise its moral tone and possibly even its intelligence level...
...More attention must be paid to creating an economic atmosphere that encourages people to produce...
...The result is less economic activity and a steady erosion of the nation's growth-a point that the compassionate and sensitive pols somehow missed until this winter when the grumbling from the countryside suddenly reached Washington...
...Last year's inflation rate was 9 percent...
...Yet they needed the money, and while the average American was not looking the compassionate pols did not worry...
...But if the government-induced inflation of the last dozen years that has increased our real taxes has had a deleterious effect on the Constitution's integrity, it has had a worse effect on the economy-a matter made dear in-an admirable little book, Federal Tax Reform: Myths and Realities, edited by Michael Boskin...
...Inflating Americans into higher and higher tax brackets has been Washington's cunning way of paying for its extravagances...
...Economic ignorance amongst the pols is as rampant as it is amongst the profs...
...As a result, today the economy is in a hell of a mess...
...Resorting to their Keynesian moonshine they say that growth must be dampened...
...Nonetheless the theory was sold to our scions, and it has reigned now for a dozen or so years...
...The economic wisdom offering hope to the average American is not the Keynesian murmur of our compassionate and sensitive pols, but the wisdom of the "supplyside" fiscalists...
...Their economic orthodoxy is so crackpot that a generation ago one who thumped for it would have been marked down as non compos mentisand possibly a saboteur...
...They oppose the convention, warning that it will lead to the repealing of-get this- the Bill of Rights...
...The covert operation has damaged the efficiency of our economy by reducing incentives to save, to produce, and to invest...
...This is catastrophe...
...The Keynesian moonshiners have paid too much attention to the demand side of the economic equation...
...Unemployment, too, can be laid to the government and its balmy policies...
...Why would a pol ever want to cut taxes...
...They grow solemn and very statesmanlike...
...This together with growing government expenditures has led to a perilously unbalanced budget...
...Nowadays traditional government services such as the postal service are an atrocity...
...As a result, our tax base and tax revenues are smaller than they otherwise would have been...
...It is not a very elegant notion, nor is it apt to solve our economic problems, but the pols' response is sheer buffoonery...
...Men like Jude Wanniski, the author of The Way the World Works, and Professor Arthur Laffer are offering a clear vision of our economic condition and the measures needed to bring the economy to renewed vigor...
...Government gets more revenue and the average American gets less, or at least not much more...
...It is time to man the lifeboats...
...They have hopped up aggregate demand while stunting economic growth with taxes and inflation...
...Most of the economic burdens and uncertainties now causing the middle class to sweat and shout in anguish can be laid to these pols and their vaporings...
...Now the citizenry are howling at the pols . for this unbalanced budget and for inflation, and the pols are in a dither of dread...
...But the thing has gotteh out of hand...
...It is about time that taxpayers and workers received some liberation...
...This year's probably will be even higher...
...Any politico running for high public office who insists on assuring us of his "compassion" or "sensitivity" or any related virtue shall from this point on be hounded from public life and banished to downtown Teheran...
...Americans are shouting for help...
...Imagine thinking that by having the government spend large amounts of borrowed funds a mysterious and salutary "ripple effect" would run through the economy, invigorating it so that more tax revenues could be collected and the budget could be balanced, the borrowed funds repaid...
...The way to encourage this real growth is to hold down the growth of money, hold down government spending, and lower marginal tax rates...
...It is as a result of government policy, not the machinations of George Meny or General Motors, that we suffer the furious inflation we have today...
...Federal Reserve Chairman G. William Miller warns that "We shall have to settle for slower growth...
...but the dollars that the average taxpayer earns to warrant his high tax bracket today have less than half the purchasing power of those earned by yesterday's rich...
...Being poor in any age would be very unpleasant, but being poor today and being forced to rely on calloused, fumbling government services would be intolerable...
...If there were more real growth in the economy, the tax base would widen, and tax revenues would increase and help to close this deficit...
...It would be hard to sell such flapdoodle even to a Russian Minister of Agriculture...
...The reason the middle class is struggling through high seas is that inflation has been almost ceaselessly gnawing at incomes for years, forcing us to earn more and more cheap dollars, thus throwing us into higher and higher tax brackets...
...My guess is that on Capitol Hill Kemp's enthusiasm for tax cuts is downright baffling...
...My guess is his audiences relish his message, His suggestions for across-the-board tax cuts are appealing and intelligent, and it is not surprising that not one of the mob now running for the presidency has picked up his message...
...That some pundits now mention a sobered-up and slimmed-down Edward Kennedy as our 1980 messiah is proof that my metaphor is not so farfetched...
...After all, the average taxpayer today is sweating away in a progressively steeped tax bracket that was inhabited only a few years ago solely by the rich...
...By inflating the economy and throwing Americans into ever higher tax brackets they have surreptitiously been thwarting the Constitution for years...
...The consumption of booze would not increase, the oratory would be more eloquent, and there would be fewer brushes with law enforcement agencies...
...In the House of Representatives Jack Kemp has-midst.the spit-balls and flights of paper airplanes-offered legislative proposals that would balance the budget, cut inflation, and increase production and prosperity...
Vol. 12 • April 1979 • No. 4
