Letter Published
Mar. 21st, 2021 06:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ndrosenOn Saturday the 20th, The Washington Post published a letter of mine, together with two other letters responding to an editorial of theirs on taxes and spending. Here is the letter, as they published it:
There are surely problems with the tax code, but raising tax rates on the earnings of the rich is a dubious measure. People may respond by taking their skills and capital offshore, or by focusing on finding or creating loopholes, instead of productive accomplishment. Do we want the next advance in solar cells, or the next thing we haven’t even thought of, to be developed and manufactured in another country?
To the extent that more revenue should be raised, let us tax things we don’t want, such as the emission of greenhouse gases, and let us charge people for such privileges as the use of the electromagnetic spectrum (which should not be given away or auctioned off).
We also need to start practicing fiscal responsibility, which both major parties have largely abandoned. Sending government checks to people who don’t especially need them, and shoveling funds to state governments and to schools that are not opening are poor uses of federal funds.
Nicholas D. Rosen, Arlington
There are surely problems with the tax code, but raising tax rates on the earnings of the rich is a dubious measure. People may respond by taking their skills and capital offshore, or by focusing on finding or creating loopholes, instead of productive accomplishment. Do we want the next advance in solar cells, or the next thing we haven’t even thought of, to be developed and manufactured in another country?
To the extent that more revenue should be raised, let us tax things we don’t want, such as the emission of greenhouse gases, and let us charge people for such privileges as the use of the electromagnetic spectrum (which should not be given away or auctioned off).
We also need to start practicing fiscal responsibility, which both major parties have largely abandoned. Sending government checks to people who don’t especially need them, and shoveling funds to state governments and to schools that are not opening are poor uses of federal funds.
Nicholas D. Rosen, Arlington
