Flat-tax Purists Have Their Say
Flat-tax Purists Have Their Say Make up your minds. Should the Republican leadership bow to demagoguery or not? Should the Republican leadership stick to principles or not? The answers change every...
...Frederick A. Lee New York, NY Sider's statist Flapdoodle Iwas dismayed to see John J. DiIulio Jr.'s glowing review of Ronald J. Sider's Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger ("Sider's Socio-Christianity," Nov...
...My flat tax is a tax cut...
...The editorial also states, incorrectly, that the flat tax imposes the heaviest burden on wage and salary income...
...Had U.S...
...They are right to argue that the best satellite data show no warming, but conservatives treat the global-warming proponents as if they were honestly mistaken...
...For most conservatives, that is an added benefit of tax reform, not something to complain about...
...That means reduced affluence in rich nations and population control everywhere...
...They don't question why they won't back down when presented with the facts, or why they always fall back on various fallacies...
...We cannot allow our Eurocentric prejudice to ignore the deaths of millions of innocent non-Westerners...
...Indeed, the reason both majority leader Dick Armey and Steve Forbes picked a 17 percent rate is to guarantee that the vast majority of individual taxpayers will send less of their money to Washington...
...Yes, Vice President Al Gore's remarks were tasteless...
...Of course, by the latter definition Daschle's statement was indeed a gaffe, since America seems to have more than its share of stupid rich people who refuse to be told that civilization does not come free...
...It's especially upsetting to find your capitulation to demagoguery sharing the pages of an issue devoted to praising Ronald Reagan, who never abandoned what you deride as "quasi-theological" dedication to free-market principles...
...Johnny Perez Washington, DC Like John Podhoretz, I am a traditionalist...
...The fear is that liberals will continue to scream that conservatives are killing the planet and destroying the future, and the Senate will ratify whatever treaty President Clinton sends them...
...It is wrong—it has always been wrong—to burn witches, to persecute Jews, and to discriminate against homosexuals...
...3) clearly illustrates that it is highly effective to employ a well-chosen metaphor...
...In short, supporters of the flat tax believe it is the right thing to do, but we also recognize that it will never happen unless we can demonstrate to legislators that good policy is also good politics...
...The exempted countries believe the United States has achieved wealth at their expense and that they would have a better chance to compete in the world economy if the United States were forced to slow its growth...
...An editorial page that routinely accuses us of fleeing from our own shadows is suddenly willing to capitulate to the old left-wing class-warfare mantra that America has rejected over and over again...
...Your cover—which I'm returning— is exactly what makes conservatives look like wackos...
...Of course, doing this will appease the environmental Left and help Al Gore get the nomination in 2000, a goal that Clinton sees as a vindication of his presidency...
...Clearly your publication deserves its name...
...The only way the world can ask Americans to give up their prosperity for others is by scaring them, and the global warming "catastrophe" does just this...
...His thesis is that wealth is a zero-sum game: Every dollar in my pocket is one fewer in the pocket of some member of the noble poor—a fact that God hates...
...On affirmative action, you urge a massive attack...
...Perhaps it would be more appropriate for a college newspaper, where sleep-deprived hack editors conjure the courage to publish clever caricatures of authority figures, despite the risk of losing precious student funding...
...Had they done so, they would have found that tax reformers recognize there is still a lot of public education that remains to be done...
...More important, however, is The Weekly Standard's assumption that tax reform cannot be accompanied by tax reduction...
...Sider's solutions to economic problems are invariably statist...
...More disappointingly, The Weekly Standard errs by accepting the liberal definition of fairness when it comes to the tax debate...
...John M. Campbell Newark, DE Coughing Up the Truth In mentioning Sen...
...Daniel J. Mitchell The Heritage Foundation Washington, DC a Cover Worthy of Gore John Podhoretz's "Why Al Gore Got in Bed with Ellen" (Nov...
...Damn the demagoguery, full speed ahead...
...I'm sorely disappointed to see The Weekly Standard fall into that trap...
...Tax reform should not be revenue neutral...
...George Jochnowitz Staten Island, NY Some Trophy Thank you for your Scrapbook item concerning actress, revolutionary, and trophy-wife Jane Fonda ("Someone We're Not Fonda," Nov...
...It is what happens when he accidentally tells the truth...
...Part of our work, needless to say, is correcting the kind of factual error that crept into the editorial...
...Then this week you urge us to run from the principle of equal treatment and abandon calls for a pure flat tax ("Second Thoughts on the Flat Tax," Nov...
...That would amount to condoning the current size of government, which I will not do...
...The review would have been more properly titled "Sider's Socialist Christianity...
...But on tax reform, the potential for class-warfare demagoguery is the only reason you give for urging us to abandon our principles...
...We would become as intellectually bankrupt as the other party...
...Since he's willing to sacrifice America's national interest to special-interest groups at home, why worry about sacrificing it to other nations...
...Rather than do what is necessary to have productive economies, these countries have decided it's easier to attack the United States...
...A real danger is the way conservatives are handling the issue...
...As he puts it in the book, "The constantly growing demand for food must stop—or at least slow down dramatically...
...Flat-taxers also support the kind of "hold-harmless" provisions that would allow taxpayers to stay in the current system...
...By failing to expose that the global-warming movement is a blatant strike at American wealth and the values that make it possible, conservatives become vulnerable to the kind of scare tactics that caused them to lose on Medicare...
...Finally, the editorial claims that zero taxes on the poor and lower taxes on the rich will mean a burden on the middle class...
...That wealth will flow into the countries that are exempt from the climate treaty...
...If you are serious about objecting to her support for Communist revolutionary movements in Southeast Asia, please note that when her side won, millions of Cambodians were murdered in a campaign of genocide by the victors...
...As I've always said, conservatives fear the public won't understand and liberals fear the public will understand...
...Cough up those bucks, you stingy creeps...
...A revenue-neutral flat tax would increase liabilities for business, not middle-class taxpayers...
...3) provides a glimpse of the true motives behind the global-warming movement...
...foreign policy and military efforts to stabilize the region by protecting South Vietnam been successful, this tragedy would not have occurred...
...But you are not hacks and this is not college...
...A Republican party afraid of dema-goguery would never put forward any ideas...
...I "do not believe that morals are subject to evolution...
...The flat tax imposes the same 17 percent tax rate on all income...
...The editors and readers of The Weekly Standard should further examine the role of Fonda and others of like mind, who, by giving aid and comfort to revolutionary causes, linked themselves to the killing fields of Cambodia...
...William Van Nest Wayne, NJ...
...The author inaccurately claimed, for instance, that taxes on interest and profits would disappear with a flat tax...
...But if I had children, I would not want them to see this...
...They would have seen that flat-tax advocates are pursuing strategies— such as the tax-code sunset legisla-tion—that keep the focus on the current system...
...The editors should have taken the time, however, to talk with flat-tax supporters and strategists...
...In reality, taxes on both sources of income are withheld and paid at the business level under the new system (much as employers withhold and pay income taxes for workers today...
...John J. Reilly Jersey City, NJ Seeing Green, Indeed Ronald Bailey's "White House Hot Air" (Nov...
...This is about economics, not the environment...
...Your standards change weekly...
...Not five times more by taking advantage of special loopholes, and not 20 times more because of discriminatory tax rates (the Left's definition of fairness...
...The editors would have discovered that flat-taxers do not want a vote on the flat tax until 2001...
...Every American trying my postcard-sized form will see the emptiness of any demagogic attack and appreciate a code that treats everyone the same...
...If you do it again, you'll lose my subscription...
...Guilt is a highly motivating human phenomenon that along with the absence of Biblical literacy and competence in economics among young evangelicals, Sider and his ilk exploit shamelessly...
...Moreover, because of the generous personal allowance available to taxpayers, the effective tax rate on wages and salaries actually will be measurably lower than the tax rate on capital and business income...
...Daschle's remark that Americans are not overtaxed, you slightly misstate Michael Kinsley's definition of a gaffe ("Daschle Our Hopes," Scrapbook, Nov...
...One looks in vain for injunctions in favor of "population control everywhere" in Holy Writ, though they are alive and well in Red China, and in Sider's daydreams...
...If conservatives believe that the law should treat everyone equally, then the flat tax is the only fair way to tax...
...First, the assertion is wrong...
...First, in October, you assert that the Republican party must lead the charge for equal treatment under the law and tear out every last vestige of affirmative action...
...According to Kinsley, a gaffe is not what happens when a politician accidentally says what he means...
...The answers change every week...
...Tellingly, he quotes Paul Wilhelm, who says of attempts to cut carbon-dioxide emissions, "All it's going to do is transfer huge amounts of the wealth in this country to somewhere else...
...House of Representatives Washington, DC The Weekly Standard's go-slow editorial about the flat tax raised valid concerns about the political implications of tax reform...
...But to depict it on the cover is low and tasteless...
...Most Americans believe that if their neighbor makes 10 times as much as they do, he should pay 10 times as much in taxes...
...Dick Armey Majority Leader U.S...
...Why does the president support this plan...
Vol. 3 • November 1997 • No. 10
