

Hunting the Rich - evanlong
http://www.economist.com/node/21530104

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Hyena
I think it would take tremendous political capital to do this. Every favored
tax treatment would be a hill to die on and there's a risk that the opposition
woukd win on a platform of adding some back in, destroying precedent against
changes immediately.

So you'd not only have to win the battles, you'd need enough manpower to
occupy the territory once the dust cleared. That occupation will last for a
couple election cycles at least; in the US it would be best done by an
incoming president popular enough to have a good shot at re-election after.

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yzhengyu
I suspect it will take an extended time of economic malaise to kill the
'trickle-down' mindset. After all, this mindset took root in the western
hemisphere during the time of Reagan and Thatcher (read, 80's) and the Horatio
Alger myth remains extremely attractive to the temporarily embarrassed
millionaires which keep cutting themselves by voting the right - at least the
non-progressive part (is there such a thing as a progressive right?) - into
power.

[As an Asian, this myth is actually far stronger in this emerging, newly
industrializing region. But there is a potential for people to quickly lose
faith in it.]

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OpieCunningham
Yes, the best solutions are to eliminate the Mortgage Interest Deduction
(which definitely won't decimate the already critically wounded housing
industry) and Employer-Provided Health Insurance Deduction (which definitely
won't push millions more people out of health insurance, "forcing" insurance
companies to increase their rates to maintain their margins and
inefficiencies).

Insanity.

