Semi-Daily Journal
Brad DeLong's Thoughts of the Moment on Economics, and on Other Topics as Well
DeLong's Home Page
September 19, 2002
Alternative Minimum Tax
The New York Times takes note of the Alternative Minimum Tax. One of the most frustrating things about the 2000 presidential campaign was that the Bush campaign promised the tax reductions from its proposed tax cut to everyone, yet calculated the cost of the tax cut assuming that, for all except the rich, the Alternative Minimum Tax would snarf back the lion's share of the tax cut and return it to the Treasury. This made the tax cut look both cheap and--as long as reporters didn't understand the impact of the AMT--and less biased toward the really rich than it in fact was. Now kudos to David C. Johnston for taking the time to focus on the issue, and for reporting Len Burman's numbers. According to Len and company--and remember that household incomes in 2010 are going to be some 30 percent higher than in 2000--the AMT will "for those making $75,000 to $100,000... take back 42 cents and for those making $100,000 to $500,000... [return] 71 cents of every dollar of rate relief to the tax collector."
If this were the first or the second or even the fifth time, I would be less depressed. But I have learned: never take any number coming out of the Bush operation at face value. "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me ten times, shame on me."
Study Says Middle Class to Lose Much of Bush Tax Cut's Benefit: Nearly all middle- and upper-middle-class families will lose some of the income tax cuts scheduled over the next eight years as they are forced to pay a separate tax originally intended to make sure that the rich cannot live tax-free, a study released today found.
By the end of the decade, when the tax cuts pushed into law by the Bush administration in 2001 become fully effective, 85 percent of taxpayers with two or more children will be forced off the regular income tax and onto a separate system known as the alternative minimum tax. The additional burden will fall largely on families with incomes of $75,000 to $500,000. Just three years ago fewer than one million taxpayers, most at the upper reaches of the income spectrum, were subject to the complex separate tax. But if nothing is changed, by 2010 about 36 million taxpayers will face it. Indeed, virtually all taxpayers earning $100,000 to $500,000 will fall under its sway.
"What was a class tax is becoming a mass tax," said Len Burman of the Urban Institute, one of the study's authors and a tax expert under former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Under the alternative minimum tax system, many deductions are denied, including those for children, the taxpayers themselves and for state and local taxes. At that point, taxes are calculated at rates of 26 to 35 percent. "We're talking about a really nasty marriage penalty," Mr. Burman said. "You are 25 times to 30 times more likely to be on the alternative minimum tax if you are married rather than single."
September 19, 2002
Study Says Middle Class to Lose Much of Bush Tax Cut's Benefit
By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON
ASHINGTON, Sept. 18 — Nearly all middle- and upper-middle-class families will lose some of the income tax cuts scheduled over the next eight years as they are forced to pay a separate tax originally intended to make sure that the rich cannot live tax-free, a study released today found.
By the end of the decade, when the tax cuts pushed into law by the Bush administration in 2001 become fully effective, 85 percent of taxpayers with two or more children will be forced off the regular income tax and onto a separate system known as the alternative minimum tax.
The additional burden will fall largely on families with incomes of $75,000 to $500,000. Just three years ago fewer than one million taxpayers, most at the upper reaches of the income spectrum, were subject to the complex separate tax. But if nothing is changed, by 2010 about 36 million taxpayers will face it. Indeed, virtually all taxpayers earning $100,000 to $500,000 will fall under its sway.
"What was a class tax is becoming a mass tax," said Len Burman of the Urban Institute, one of the study's authors and a tax expert under former Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.
Under the alternative minimum tax system, many deductions are denied, including those for children, the taxpayers themselves and for state and local taxes. At that point, taxes are calculated at rates of 26 to 35 percent.
"We're talking about a really nasty marriage penalty," Mr. Burman said. "You are 25 times to 30 times more likely to be on the alternative minimum tax if you are married rather than single."
The study, drawn from computer models of tax behavior similar to those used by Congress and the administration, was made by the Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute.
The authors of the study are economists who have served under both Republican and Democratic administrations. While generally espousing moderately liberal positions, they have done research and made calculations that are generally considered nonpartisan and are widely respected.
It has been known since shortly after Mr. Bush's tax cut bill was introduced last year that its rate cuts would force many middle-class people off the regular income tax and onto the alternative tax. But the study provides the most in-depth look to date at the impact on millions of taxpayers of the interaction between the regular system and the alternative tax.
Claire Buchan, a White House spokeswoman, said that "the administration is aware of this issue and will continue to look at it and work with any members of Congress who are interested."
The study, however, shows just how hard it will be to repair the problem, demonstrating that almost any solution will cost the Treasury hundreds of billions of dollars or require raising taxes elsewhere to compensate for the losses. No action is expected anytime soon.
The new study also raises questions about whether the government has, inadvertently, adopted an antifamily tax policy despite years of talk in Congress and on the campaign trail about giving tax relief to middle-class families.
The study found that 97 percent of families with two children and income of $75,000 to $100,000 would be forced off the regular income tax system by 2010.
"This is a cop married to a nurse," said William Gale of the Brookings Institution, one of the study's authors.
The alternative tax will raise only about $13 billion this year, but its impact will soar to $141.4 billion in 2010, the authors calculated. By 2008, they said, it would cost more to repeal the alternative tax than to repeal the regular tax, an indication of the government's growing reliance on the tax.
For those making less than $50,000 — roughly three-fourths of all taxpayers — the alternative tax has only negligible effects.
For those making $50,000 to $75,000, the alternative tax in 2010 will, on average, take away 18 cents of each dollar of the scheduled Bush tax cuts. For those making $75,000 to $100,000 it will take back 42 cents and for those making $100,000 to $500,000 it returns 71 cents of every dollar of rate relief to the tax collector.
Taxpayers making more than $1 million, however, will lose just 8 cents on each dollar of the Bush tax cuts because most rich taxpayers would still face higher rates under the normal system than under the alternative tax.
More than half of the Bush tax cuts, when fully effective in 2010, will go to those making more than $1 million, other analyses have shown.
The study yesterday showed that the burden of the minimum tax will shift from the richest Americans to the middle class, which the authors defined as including people making up to $100,000.
Today people making more than $1 million pay 20 cents on each dollar that the alternative tax raises, but in 2010 that will fall to 5 cents. At the same time taxpayers earning $50,000 to $100,000 will see their share of the alternative tax triple to 18 cents of every dollar raised.
This shift in who pays the alternative tax explains, the authors said, why those making $75,000 to $200,000 will pay a larger share of all income taxes in 2010, while those making $1 million or more will pay less.
Those making $100,000 to $200,000, for example, will pay 21.8 percent of the combined revenue from the regular and the alternative income tax this year. That will rise to 27.1 percent in 2010.
For those making more than $1 million, however, their share of taxes will go down, from 21.6 percent this year to 18.5 percent in 2010.
When the current form of the alternative tax was adopted, as part of the 1986 tax reform act, it raised only about $1 billion from a relatively small number of rich taxpayers who used aggressive techniques to avoid income taxes, Mr. Burman said.
The authors said that the revenue from the alternative tax is rising so fast that to return it to its original intent would cost as much as $951 billion over the next decade. They said simply abolishing the tax would make the system less fair. But limiting it to the old target could be financed, they said, by freezing the 2001 Bush tax cuts, for both income and estates, at their current levels.
Posted by DeLong at September 19, 2002 07:36 AM
| Trackback
Oh, for crying out loud. How can anyone spin this as an issue where Republicans are in the wrong? The AMT is the Democrats' favorite tax! It canceled out a lot of Clintons' middle-class tax cuts, too. If you took a vote in Congress today on repealing or indexing the AMT, how do you think the two parties would line up?
Of course this is the fault of the Republicans. The object of the tax cut was to enrich the rich, and force a greater cut when the problem of the AMT had to be corrected. Also, the tax cut was made with the idea in mind that it might even force structural change in social security.
This was indeed a Republican tax cut and as such the middle class and poor will pay the price.
I wonder if Mr. King could make it through just one day without invoking a logical fallacy.
Perhaps I can give a self-centered opinion? I am middle-class who pays the AMT today because I live and work abroad. So officially I am paying one of the highest rates in the world (French income taxes *plus* the AMT), not to speak of the misery that filing more forms causes. No one cries for me, and everyone thinks I am fair game because I'm part of a small minority. Now more Stateside will have to pay it? GOOD!
Congress will surely get rid of the AMT since voters will demand they do so. However, since this will add to the cost of the tax cut, there will be more and more deficit pressure.
Paul Krugman repeatedly called attention to this problem, while the press generally paid no attention.
"Defenders of the tax cut seize on the fact that so far tax cuts account for only about 15 percent of the budget deterioration. But using that to argue that the tax cuts did no harm is disingenuous in two ways.
"First, that share will rise sharply over time: most of the tax cuts haven't phased in yet. If the whole tax cut were already in place, the deficit would be around $90 billion larger; if you take into account the inevitable AMT fix, it would go another $20 or $30 billion higher. In other words, any hope that economic recovery will bring us back into the black is eliminated by the tax cuts that haven't happened yet but are in the pipeline."
By Paul Krugman
Responding to, "Congress will surely get rid of the AMT since voters will demand they do so."
Not voters, donors. People making $75,000 and up are not that large a part of the population but are most of the political donors.
"We" (assuming most people here are professionals) often lose perspective on what most people are making and forget that we make quite a bit more. (We probably feel like we don't make a lot, but look at the stats.)
Krugman opposes tax cuts because they inevitably raise a conflict with those activities that he prefers the state to engage in, and is constrained from doing so if deficits loom. Bush, although not a proponent of limited government (few baseball team owners are), attempts to reduce taxes in any manner he can, because his political base favors it. I have no warm feelings for Mr. Bush, but as one who would prefer to see a smaller national government, I wish him well with any and all efforts to reduce the amount of revenue collected.
It is bizarre how loads of right-wing weblogs seem to think this is a problem for the Democrats. Bush -- the worst president since World War II -- consistently fixes and fudges his budget numbers, and only through his mania for war has he so far kept it from the front pages.
Until some president engages in policies which results in more than 55,000 names of young dead Americans being engraved on a wall in remembrence of a lost war, LBJ, and to a lesser extent, Nixon and Kennedy will lead the pack of bad post WWII presidents.
re:
>>Oh, for crying out loud. How can anyone spin this as an issue where Republicans are in the wrong?<<
If you'd had to debate Mike Boskin at Stanford's Institute for Economic Policy Research in October, 2000, and had listened to him stay on message, you'd have my view too. It was painful: one minute arguing that we could afford the proposed tax cut by comparing its cost (retaining the current AMT structure) to anticipated surpluses, the next minute talking about how large the tax reductions would be (assuming that the AMT would be reformed so as not to raise significant revenue).
It was painful, I tell you.
'I wish him well with any and all efforts to reduce the amount of revenue collected.'
Lying to advance your cause is acceptable now?
Jason, every president and every presidential candidate lies. Every. Last. One. One cannot possibly run for president of the United States, and cobble together the coalition of constituents needed to get 270 electoral votes, without lying. This has become particularly true in the modern age, as bribing voters has become more prevalent. Do you really believe that Gore's cost projections for the expansion of state activity he advocated were honest, particularly given the historical record of medical care entitlements growing at much higher than anticipated rates? The primary difference you and I have is that you prefer that voters be bribed with money taken from others who have gained it through voluntary means, and I would prefer that voters be bribed by being allowed to keep more of what they received through voluntary means. What I find most distasteful about our current President, and one of the few areas where I agree with Krugman, is that he made his fortune by using eminent domain to obtain property for purely private purpose. The fact that he lies about budget figures is a minor offense in comparison to the thuggish acquisition of wealth via state power, particularly since his budget lies have the effect, if only marginally and inadverdently, of constraining yet more thuggish acquisitions of wealth. The world ain't perfect, and often it is necessary to choose the lesser of evils.
I have no idea whether Gore's projected numbers were honest (I can't find the actual proposal, but I see estimates everywhere between 250 & 400 billion over a decade), but I damn well know Bush's stink to high heaven.
Let me get this straight: predicting future health care expenditures in a new program is hard, and lots of people disagree on how to price it. Predicting that the AMT is going to increase the price of the Bush tax cut, by contrast, is stupidly easy.
However, intentionally lying about the long-term cost of the Bush tax cut is less objectionable than (possibly) underpricing a new prescription drug program.
It's good that you cleared up brazen lying as being ok, though.
News Headlines:
"Anti-Tax Cut Economists say: Bush Cut Not Nearly So Bad As It Looks"
...and...
"Anti-Tax Cut Economists say: Another Thing Wrong With The Bush Cut -- It's Not As Big As It Looks and Fooled the Rich"
Which one would appear only in the Onion and which do we see in real life?
So now it's the agenda of liberal anti-tax cutters to damn the Bush cut for being *smaller* than they thought, and for screwing the rich in particular, clawing back 71% from those making between $100,000 and $500,000? How amusing -- how far partisanship does take us. ;-)
[Or has the $100,000 to $500,000 income range really suddenly become "the middle class" in the liberal point of view? Talk about co-opting the Republicans!]
Perhaps it truly is the "deceit" perpetrated upon the rich that has these liberal anti-tax cutters so upset? (The poor, naive, rich can't figure things our for themselves.) The "lies", "brazen lying", "fool me five times" etc.?
Well, that's just totally bogus. There are lots of lies told in politics, I could mention plenty by each party recently, but there was *no* lie here -- because you can't hide what the Tax Code says. And *everybody* knew what the effect of the Bush cut with AMT unchanged was going to be since *before* it was enacted.
(Certainly everybody who was genuinely concerned enough about the tax cut issue to have modestly educated themselves about it, and everybody in a position to be affected by the AMT who had the sense to be informed about it for self-defense. The numbers in the study cited here are basically the same as in every other analysis since before the cut was passed -- and there've been plenty of them.)
The rationalization that 'The press didn't pick up this issue so the people were fooled' is total malarky. This "Bush cut-AMT" business has been gone all over in a *thousand* articles in the popular press starting *before* the cut was passed. I wrote a half dozen of them myself. E.g, what's the heading on this one? http://www.mutual-funds.com/mfmag/stories/2002/may/cuttaxes.html
Or how about this one, published well before the tax cut was enacted: http://www.detnews.com/2001/politics/0103/16/a03-198475.htm
Are publications like this too obscure for the average voter?
So anyone who claims to have been "fooled" about all this, and to be shocked by its discovery, can only remind me of Louis claiming to be so shocked by his late discovery of gambling in that casino -- a claim made for self-advantage, of course. Though one might more charitably assume such a person merely has been asleep at the switch for a couple years.
The reason the AMT hasn't become a hot story in the press (in spite of all its exposure), is the obvious one -- it still affects so few people, only about 1% of taxpayers. And the reason it hasn't become a partisan issue as spun here -- and won't -- is because it is a fully bipartisan creation (and mainly driven by Democrats).
As nominal income goes up, AMT hits lower, period. With no Bush cut the AMT would still hit 15 million in 2010 (a 1,000% increase) with the number rising fast. Did the liberal economists complaining now about the AMT also complain about this big rise under Gore's tax plans?
Or, if it really is the *principle* that tax cuts shouldn't be sold as having general value to the public when they have "claw back" provisions that make them worthless to many, I can go down the long list of tax cut provisions of the Clinton era that have clawbacks far more obscure, and affecting many more taxpayers, than the AMT here. Anyone want to apply high principle to those?
'So now it's the agenda of liberal anti-tax cutters to damn the Bush cut for being *smaller* than they thought, and for screwing the rich in particular, clawing back 71% from those making between $100,000 and $500,000? How amusing -- how far partisanship does take us. ;-)'
No, it's that they pretended that inevitable adjustment of the AMT wouldn't happen (which it obviously will) so they could keep the tax cut out of the social security surplus. No such thing will happen, of course, and the mysterious revenue shortfall will no doubt be blamed, once again, on the chimera of "congressional pork."
Modern conservatism has developed a real interest in misrepresenting its plans to the public; what with David Stockman starting it ("we'll starve the government through deficits!"), I think it's gone on long enough to be considered official policy.
People like Krugman object to politicians who are intellectually dishonest regarding their economic proposals only when that dishonesty is employed in pursuit of goals they oppose. If the dishonesty is employed in pursuit of goals they approve, they are strangely mum. This is what qualifies one to write a column for a major newspaper. Repeat after me: all politicians lie and all politicians are hypocrites, so to charge a politician with dishonesty or hypocrisy is akin to making the penetrating obeservation that the world rotates on it's axis. Furthermore, lying and intellectual dishonesty are not even close to being the worst actions our politicians engage in. Illegitimate uses of force, like the Farm Bill, to name one of the more egregious examples, is a far worse moral offense than dishonesty in campaign rhetoric, and if dishonest rhetoric impedes the ability of politicians to commit yet more far worse moral offenses, if only inadverdantly and marginally, then I'll choose the lesser of evils.
>>'So now it's the agenda of liberal anti-tax cutters to damn the Bush cut for being *smaller* than they thought...<<
>No, it's that they pretended that inevitable adjustment of the AMT wouldn't happen (which it obviously will) ...<
Really?? That's a bit of an assumption isn't it? All the Democrats who are so opposed "to tax cuts for the rich" are going to just stand around idly and let this tax cut targeted especially at the rich simply happen?
OK, if you say so -- but if you want to assume "most likely scenarios" and change the cost of the tax cut thusly, you have to be willing to play that game *both ways*.
For instance, nobody I know in the private sector or government or wherever believes the estate tax is actually going to be repealed out after 2010. That's just pure political posturing by politicos today that is cost-free to them. (The estate tax has already been eliminated or slashed "in the future" this way by Congress several times, and it's never happened in reality once.)
And if you reduce the cost of the Bush tax cut by the inevitable continuance of the estate tax, which will obviously happen, then the total cost of the tax cut drops significantly -- and all the rhetoric that so much of the cut goes to "the top 1%" is near totally undercut, because it's the estate tax repeal that accounts for almost all of that.
So if you want to adjust the tax cut numbers by "what will surely happen" don't do it just one way. That's not playing straight.
>> Modern conservatism has developed a real interest in misrepresenting its plans to the public; what with David Stockman starting it...<<
Geeze, you think this is a "conservative" thing and it started only with David Stockman??? It is a *politician's* thing and it started at the dawn of the human race.
FDR's famous 1940 campaign promise...
"While I am talking to you mothers and fathers, I give you one more assurance. I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars."
... rather fully misrepersented his intentions, came from a non-conservative, and predated David Stockman.
Or, if you want to talk only of economic intentions, we could mention FDR's 1932 campaign platform that he hammered over and over on the campaign trail -- that he was going to fight the Depression by (1) balancing the budget by (2) cutting the size of Hoover's bloated government. How true were those to his intentions? ;-)
All politicians in all parties operate under the same incentives and behave accordingly. To say "the *other* party plays deceptive politics but mine never does" is the height of naiveté, or perhaps conscious partisan posturing -- or maybe one's party just fooled one!
Who cares how much of the Bush tax cut goes to the upper classes, and how third-party advocacy groups calculate it? It's important, obviously, but that wasn't my point: that GOP politicians, since the Reagan radicalization, have developed a real love for misrepresenting the costs and benefits of their policies, especially in the realm of tax cuts, that has no parallel on the other side of the aisle.
The AMT, estate tax time-limit, and not including the tenth year in the costs of the tax cut (I swear I'm not making that up) were all used to intentionally used to lowball the costs of the tax cut. It's arguable whether the estate tax will end up being permanent (and if it's not, then the rhetoric is completely insane; we're going to save family farmers, but only for the next decade? Is this really an improvement than if he *did* lie?), and I suppose theoretically there's a 1% chance the AMT will stick around, but leaving the tenth year out of the cost estimate is completely indefensible. Add in everything that comes out of Mitch Daniels mouth, and that's why I'm so royally pissed off by this.
'All politicians in all parties operate under the same incentives and behave accordingly. To say "the *other* party plays deceptive politics but mine never does" is the height of naiveté, or perhaps conscious partisan posturing -- or maybe one's party just fooled one!'
How about "from Reagan on, the GOP has been spectacularly worse at it than the Democrats?" The Democratic party, near as I can tell, hasn't made lying about the budget the centerpiece of their long-term strategy. They don't play mathematical tricks with their budget proposals, and they don't release false numbers from the OMB.
I think there's also a difference between "changing your mind" ala FDR '32, about which I'm going to plead ignorance until I do more research, and "lying about immutable facts." A quick look at the party platform shows only the "no deficit spending" and "eliminate extravegance (read: waste) by 25%" lines being violated. Still, those are campaign promises, which are always full of fluffy clouds and flowers. Misrepresenting the financial consequences of what you're up to is a different bird.
And gee, when the costs of various proposed programs are estimated, they are always off on the low side, never the high side, because predicting costs is so hard, see, and it is merely coincidence that the mistakes are always made in the same direction.....Jason, you simply prefer one form of dishonesty over another, and then you blind yourself to that which you don't wish to acknowledge.
And gee, when the costs of various proposed programs are estimated, they are always off on the low side, never the high side, because predicting costs is so hard, see, and it is merely coincidence that the mistakes are always made in the same direction.....Jason, you simply prefer one form of dishonesty over another, and then you blind yourself to that which you don't wish to acknowledge.
What would be a recent example of these lowballed costs? The failed prescription drug benefit and Clintoncare plans, about which there's no evidence to determine whether projected costs were too low?
Didn't the actual cost of the EITC end up lower than projected?
Jason, every president and every presidential candidate lies. Every. Last. One.
This is astonishing to read. Acknowledging that Bush is lying, and saying it is OK because it is tricking the public in order to starve public funds from programs that the public wants.
The writer is one of the most ammoral people I have encountered in a long time!
It is extremely demoralizing to realize that there really are people like this, who advocate governing in this manner!
Jason, go all the way back to every medical entitlement program since medicare was adopted, check the projected costs at the time it was proposed, and then check what the actual costs actually were. I suppose you could make the case that these were good faith errors, and it is merely coincidental that the errors were in one direction, but that doesn't speak well for the ability of those making the errors ability to learn from experience. It is far more reasonable to believe that the cost projections were intentionally low-balled in order to make passage of these laws more likely. You, and likely IssuesGuy, also, do not object to this sort of dishonesty because it is dishonesty employed in pursuit of something you favor. You rail against the dishonesty of others when they employ it in pursuit of goals you oppose. IssuesGuy, if you wish to name one major party candidate who has not lied in pursuit of power, please do so. In the space of roughly one half hour, I will produce dishonesty that they engaged in. The principal activity of our national government is the forcible transfer of property from those belonging to smaller or less well organized factions to those belonging to larger or better organized factions, without regard to the need of such transfers to preserve liberty. Thus, to cite some more egregious examples, older, wealthier, people, or wealthy people who belong to politically powerful factions, like agribusiness or baseball team owners , are able to access the state's monopoly on force to take the property of less wealthy, often younger people. The fact that democratic processes were employed to implement such power adds a thin veneer of moral legitimacy to cover what is fundamentally a morally illegitimate act, for as we have discussed previously in other forums, Jason, democratic processes are only the beginning of providing moral legitimacy to the use of violence, or threat thereof, and not even close to being the end of what is required to legitimate the use or threat of violence. Issueguy calls me amoral for tolerating dishonest rhetoric that anyone who cut back on their TV watching for 30 minutes a week, and spent that time educating themselves, could plainly see through. Meanwhile, Issueguy supports the idea that might makes right, as long as the exercise of might is supported, or acquiesced to, by a majority. Amorality, unfortunately, is a constant feature in this Vale of Tears, but if you think that dishonest political rhetoric is the worst sort of amorality we tolerate, well, you either haven't thought about amorality in a serious way, or you are engaging in dishonesty yourself.
IssuesGuy, if you wish to name one major party candidate who has not lied in pursuit of power, please do so.
Dwight Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Al Gore. They also ran clean, positive campaigns.
go all the way back to every medical entitlement program since medicare was adopted, check the projected costs at the time it was proposed, and then check what the actual costs actually were. I suppose you could make the case that these were good faith errors, and it is merely coincidental that the errors were in one direction, but that doesn't speak well for the ability of those making the errors ability to learn from experience.
Accounting for inflation, the cost of medical advances and population increases, I think they were accurately projected. Are you trying to say that the public doesn't want these programs, or wouldn't want them if costs increased?
The principal activity of our national government is the forcible transfer of property from those belonging to smaller or less well organized factions to those belonging to larger or better organized factions, without regard to the need of such transfers to preserve liberty.
So it's DEMOCRACY you object to, although I'm surprised you would come out and say it, considering that you seem to prefer those who use deceipt to mask their agenda.
Issueguy calls me amoral for tolerating dishonest rhetoric that anyone who cut back on their TV watching for 30 minutes a week, and spent that time educating themselves, could plainly see through.
Exactly.
Meanwhile, Issueguy supports the idea that might makes right, as long as the exercise of might is supported, or acquiesced to, by a majority.
If you mean democracy, yes. I disagree that democracy is "might makes right."
I have little time right now, but to clarify: is it your position that the politicians you mentioned engaged in no falsehoods while in pursuit of votes? Lastly, although I am glad to see you forthrightly concede that, in your view, when it comes to majorities, the will to power is the legitimating principle, it is interesting, to say the least, to have someone who advocates such a principle accuse others of amorality.
Brad, Thanks for posting the Johnston article, which discussed my study coauthored with Bill Gale, Jeff Rohaly, and Ben Harris. Based on the vociferous debate on this page, your readers may be interested in reading our study itself. It, and other fodder for partisan spinning, can be found at www.taxpolicycenter.org.
For what it's worth, my view is that the AMT mess is largely the result of bipartisan negligence. But also note that President Clinton made the only serious proposal to rein in the AMT in 2000. It would have allowed families to claim their dependent exemptions against the AMT, which would have prevented parents from being thrust on the AMYT simply because they have kids.