Lower Taxes, Increase Revenues

To liberals, that is heresy to make that statement, as they never met a tax they didn't like, the higher the better.

At first glance, it might not seem feasible that by cutting taxes the revenue to the government would rise, but let's look at what has happened in the past. In past administrations, starting with Calvin Coolidge, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, when they lowered taxes, government revenues increased. In fact, when Ronald Reagan lowered taxes in the early 80's, government revenues almost doubled in the five years (from 1983 to 1988), and sparked an economic boom that lasted for more than 20 years up until 2008.

The major argument by the “tax and spend” liberals, is that our tax laws favor the rich and hurt the poor. They feel that successful people shouldn't have big incomes and they want to tax them more to get those “extra dollars” to be able to give more to the less fortunate by “evening the playing field”, an idea taken right out of the Karl Marx playbook. It is called “income redistribution”.

In our mostly capitalistic economic system, the major principle in capitalism is the incentive to be able to be remunerated for the time, skill, and effort that a person puts into becoming successful. Of course, not everyone will become wealthy, but the opportunity is there for everyone to either succeed or fail or to just earn a decent living. So, should the financially successful person be demonized and financially punished by the government by over taxing them in order to “redistribute the wealth”? A fact which is generally overlooked by the socialist oriented Democrats, is that in our capitalist society, 90% of the people who are part of the “evil” 1%, made their money and wealth on their own, they did not inherit it, which proves that anyone can become wealthy under our free enterprise economic system. So, instead of trying to encourage people to aspire to become successful and rich, the liberal Democrats are trying to bring the wealthy down to mediocrity by over taxing them and taking away the incentives that made them successful in the firstplace. That idea was not what has made the economic colossus, that is the U.S.A., the richest country in the world and, I might add, the envy of the world.

Look around the country, what states and cities are economic basket cases, like the states of Illinois, California, and cities like Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Baltimore, Oakland etc.? By the way, most all are run by Democrats, for many, many years. All have very high tax rates and a bloated bureaucracy with billions of unfunded liabilities (mostly in the form of state and city pensions) that bring them close to going into bankruptcy or they have already become bankrupt (as in the case of Detroit). Their tax and spend policies hasn't worked, in fact, they have backfired and made things worse.

Let's look at the State of North Carolina. According to the Wall St. Journal, four years ago the North Carolina unemployment rate was above 10%. Many of the smaller towns in the state had jobless rates of more than 20%. But, in 2013 (with the election of a Republican governor) a combination of the biggest tax-rate reduction in the state's history and a gutsy but controversial unemployment-insurance reform, supercharged the state's economy and has even helped finance budget surpluses.

North Carolina slashed the state's top personal income-tax rate to 5.75% from 7.75%. The corporate tax-rate was cut to 5% from 6.9% and the estate tax was eliminated. Even with the lower rates, tax revenues increased 6% this year and the state now has a $400 million budget surplus.

This isn't theory, these are facts that some of tax and spend states should emulate instead of the harmful fiscal policies they are now pursuing. The same can be said for the Federal Government.

North Carolina has proven that lowering taxes to a “fair” level not only helps the economy and creates jobs, it also brings in more revenue to the state's coffers. WAY TO GO NO. CAROLINA!

Conservative commentary by Chuck Lehmann