Sunday, February 3, 2019

White House Adviser Larry Kudlow says taxing rich never works

The White House advisor implied that the Democratic proposals to increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans could lead to economic troubles. He compared the proposal to Venezuela and stated that the country is an absolute catastrophe. They taxed rich people, they taxed everybody and they have equality of sorts - everybody's poor.

Freshman N.Y Rep. Alexandrea Ocasio-Cortez- proposed a 70 percent marginal on rate with incomes above $10 million. Senator Elizabeth Warren also joined in on the proposal for a "wealth tax" on some of the richest Americans. Warrens Proposal is expected to apply to less than 0.1 percent of U.S Households and would raise 2.75 trillion over 10 years.

Kudlow stated that taxing the wealthy never works and would depress the nations gross domestic product. He continues to explain that the most successful are not only paying their fair share, they're paying the most, by far. 



https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/01/white-house-advisor-kudlow-compares-democratic-wealth-tax-to-venezuela.html?recirc=taboolainternal


2 comments:

Greg Margevicius said...

Naturally the President is disavowing the tax proposals of the opposition party, especially after he oversaw a massive tax overhaul. While Venezuela's economic problems are due rather due to massive government programs and betting heavily on oil prices remaining high rather than exorbitant tax rates.

The members of the party opposed to the President are putting forward alternatives to the President in regards to the fact as his largest accomplishment is a tax overhaul, while Warren's tax would likely do much more damage than Ocasio Cortez's as Ocasio Cortez's will not inherently discourage investment while Warren's will.

While neither of these taxes will lead a substantial amount of money being brought in it will marginally help to lower the deficit. Currently the richest 1% pays almost 40% of the country's taxes

Mary Ellen said...

The comparison to Venezuela's situation seems so misguided. If anything one of their big problems is that they depended on oil to fund their welfare programs instead of taxes, and then Chavez started taking money from the state oil companies investment fund to keep the welfare programs when the price of oil dropped leaving the company with no money to invest internally or get them through the price slump.

It'll be interesting to see where these ideas for tax increases go. It'd be nice to see some sort of compromise via a smaller tax increase paired with cuts in government spending, but with the current political situation that seems unlikely.