
The Economics of Soaking the Rich - smacktoward
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/opinion/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-tax-policy-dance.html
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zepto
I agree with most of this, however it misses out the obvious.

The issue of taxes isn’t just about how much is raised, it is also about what
it is spent on.

Asserting that it’s optimal to raise as much tax as possible is based on the
assumption that the government is better than anyone else at deploying
resources.

This is the assumption that conservatives challenge, and which is at the root
of the drive to lower taxes.

An extreme conservative position would be that the government should be as
small as possible and taxes should be minimized.

The opposite extreme would be to maximize tax revenue, and hence maximize the
power of the government.

Krugman is making the case here that AOC is taking a well informed but
nevertheless extreme position whose goal is to maximize government.

We can argue about whether this is the appropriate policy for our current
situation, but it’s clearly at the extreme end of what’s possible.

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dragonwriter
> An extreme conservative position would be that the government should be as
> small as possible and taxes should be minimized.

No, that's an extreme libertarian position. While conservatives often adopt
libertarian arguments when the subject is an area where liberals prefer active
government (and, conversely, liberals do so, though less often, when the area
is one where conservatives prefer active government) [0], conservatives aren't
generally minarchists the way libertarians are.

[0] As well as spending, this included taxes, hence why Reagan presided over
both a historically large tax cut and a historically large tax increase that
together amounted to a massive tax burden shift down the income scale.

~~~
zepto
Agreed - that’s a fair correction, although it doesn’t change the point about
AOC and Krugman assuming the extreme goal of maximizing government.

