Thursday, September 18, 2008

Taxes and Patriotism    [Ramesh Ponnuru]

Biden surely means more than that if taxes are raised, high earners will have a patriotic duty to comply with the law. He means that a patriot should support raising taxes. But of course any public policy can be supported for patriotic reasons—because the advocate of the policy thinks it would advance the national interest. I tend to think that raising the top marginal tax rate would set the country back (although I am not necessarily averse to other ways of making high earners pay more). So I disagree with Biden about what patriotism requires here. The invocation of patriotism does no analytical work here.You could just as well say "good people should support tax increases." You would merely be dumbing down the debate in a way liberals usually find objectionable.

09/18 07:13 PMShare