LETTERS
Letters Electoral College The article “What’s Good about the Electoral College” [April] completely confirms my friend’s oft-repeated conviction that “there are simply NO good arguments for...
...we majority of the people in this country...
...This is not so say that there is no case for personal income tax indexation-there is...
...If a plurality wins, calling it decisive makes it no more a victory...
...But even the proponents should take time to get the facts...
...Letters Electoral College The article “What’s Good about the Electoral College” [April] completely confirms my friend’s oft-repeated conviction that “there are simply NO good arguments for the Electoral College...
...The authors reply: Congressmen, as we noted at considerable length in our article, do love to cut taxes...
...We There are NO good reasons for maintaining an anachronism that at best serves no purpose and at worse has a potential for abuse...
...If politicians want to improve their margins they need only multiply the winner’s popular vote by 1.05 and the loser’s by .95, thus accomplishing the same end without the troubles and expense of the Electoral College...
...Well, they are wrong on that...
...Electors are not bound to vote for candidates and there is a disDroDortionate Dower distribution...
...When The Washington Monthly fails to come up with decent counter-arguments, the case is closed...
...The facts are that the four Congressionally mandated ad hoc tax reductions between 1960 and 1975 have more than eliminated the inflationary impact on overall effective personal income tax rates...
...GRETCHEN DZIADOSZ Madison, Wisconsin Taxflation In their April 1977 article on “taxflation” and the Federal personal income tax, Michael Nelson and Donald Sweeney have attempted to inform us of our political naivete regarding the sinister and “secret way that liberals [Kennedy, Muskie, Proxmire, Ribicoffl raise income taxes...
...What we don’t like is that the money they “give” us with such great fanfare is money they have already slipped out of our pockets bv not correctine the inflation vulnerability 01 the unindeGd income tax structure...
...It is even less persuasive when one considers that if the system were functioning, the effects might be disastrous...
...As Nelson and Sweeney correctly point out, inflation does indeed interact with a progressive income tax to generate automatic, non-legislated increases in real tax burdens...
...refer the reader...
...No evidence was presented to show that the College has ever prevented a crisis...
...ROBERT D. EBEL Washington, D.C...
...The major arguments-that “it works” and -that it turns “razor-thin popular majorities into decisive majorities”-are patently fallacious...
...Finally, the author himself provides some of the strongest reasons for abolishing the College-there is a potential for great miscarriage of justice...
...First, the fact that an archaic and currently non-functional system has failed to screw up is hardly persuasive evidence for its continuation...
...However, as proof that the liberals are irresponsibly secretly (!) subverting the progressive income tax through their opposition to indexing, the authors state (page 48) that the liberal solution of periodic ad hoc tax cuts simply does not offest the taxincreasing effects of the inflation/progressive income tax interplay...
...sh6uld not forgei that the College was Incidentally, Mr...
...Second, the idea of turning “thin” majorities into “decisive” ones is so obvious a semantic game that I am concerned that it went by the normally insightful editors...
...Ebel’s representation of designed out of a grave mistrust of the our statements on page 48 is inaccurate...
...The Brookings evidence also shows that all income classes except those between $25,000 and $200,000 have lower effective rates in 1975 than they would have had if the 1960 law had been indexed and no discretionary changes had been made in the interim...
Vol. 9 • June 1977 • No. 4
