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Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review May 16, 2007 / 28 Iyar, 5767

The Tax-Cut Myth

By John Stossel


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The federal government keeps growing, as I pointed out last week, but the Bush administration has cut tax rates a few times since 2001. How can that be? The answer is simple: deficit spending.


Some Republicans argue that deficits don't matter; that if you cut taxes, everything else takes care of itself. But that's a myth. Yes, the tax cuts stimulated the economy and increased tax revenues. It happens because, as the Laffer Curve illustrates [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve], lower rates mean higher rewards for productive activities. People undertake investments and work that higher tax rates had discouraged. They are also less likely to invest time and energy in using accountants and tax lawyers to find ways to avoid taxes.


That's all good, but there's a downside to cutting tax rates without cutting spending. Deficit spending disguises the real burden of government. As a result, we get more than we'd want — and that's not good. Government makes up the deficit either by borrowing, which removes productive resources from private hands and must be repaid by future taxes, or by creating money out of thin air — inflation — which steals purchasing power from us by devaluing our money.


In other words, tax cuts without spending cuts are an illusion. The burden of government has not really been lightened. As the late Milton Friedman constantly pointed out, that burden is better measured by the level of spending, not the level of taxes. Shame on the Bush administration for trying to pull a fast one on the American public.


President Bush brags that the deficit is coming down — and it is. It's expected to be "only" $244 billion by the time the current fiscal year ends. And the Office of Management and Budget projects a surplus in 2012. But that's largely because your FICA taxes currently exceed Social Security and Medicare payments. That will change in 2017 and 2019, respectively, when the baby-boomers retire en masse. After that, the Social Security and Medicare budgets begin to go south. Sharply. Avoiding devastating deficits then will take a Houdini.


Let's give President Bush some credit for the falling deficit. Because of his tax cuts, tax revenue — our hard-earned money — is pouring into the government's coffers, Government spending is keeping ahead of that torrent, but at an ever-slower rate. Hence the shrinking deficit. But this is not necessarily a good thing.


Bush boasted last year, "This economy is growing, federal taxes are rising, and we're cutting the federal deficit faster than we expected. Some in Washington say we had to choose between cutting taxes and cutting the deficit. Today's numbers show that that was a false choice. The economic growth fueled by tax relief has helped send our tax revenues soaring."


But I don't want tax revenues to soar. That's money you and I could be spending for things we want. I want revenue and spending and government overall to shrink. So I'm not celebrating with the president. The deficit is shrinking because the government takes more and more out of the productive private sector each year.


If revenues are pouring in, why don't the politicians return it to the taxpayers instead of spending it? Because politicians love to spend money. They get reelected not by how much they save but by how much they shower on interest groups.


This was foreseen by anti-federalist writer Melancton Smith in 1787: "[A]ll governments find a use for as much money as they can raise."


Things haven't changed much in 220 years.

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JUST OUT FROM STOSSEL
Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel --- Why Everything You Know Is Wrong  

Stossel mines his 20/20 segments for often engaging challenges to conventional wisdom, presenting a series of "myths" and then deploying an investigative journalism shovel to unearth "truth." This results in snappy debunkings of alarmism, witch-hunts, satanic ritual abuse prosecutions and marketing hokum like the irradiated-foods panic, homeopathic medicine and the notion that bottled water beats tap. Stossel's libertarian convictions make him particularly fond of exposes of government waste and regulatory fiascoes. Sales help fund JWR.



JWR contributor John Stossel is co-anchor of ABC News' "20/20." To comment, please click here.


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