From: ThosStew@aol.com
Date: Sat Oct 14 2000 - 09:12:24 PDT
In a message dated 10/13/2000 8:56:21 PM, dl@silcom.com writes:
>Why wouldn't uniform taxation let the market decide which risky
>investments were worth making? Isn't the current system just a
>legislatively imposed bias? (in which case the optimal economic
>policy for the United States would be to abolish the tax category
>entirely?)
Yes, if you believe that tax neutrality is the optimal economic policy.
However, you and others vote for congresspeople precisely because you don't
actually believe that. For example, from Herbert Hoover until the present,
most peple of good intention have believed that it;'s a good thing to tax
large inheritances, because too much inherited wealth, we figure, leads to
Versailles and we al lknow what THAT led to. Similarly people believe that
R&D deserves a tax subsidy, which it gets. And home ownership, which it gets.
And entrepreneurship, hencefavorable captial gains rates --or that's the
theory.
Tom
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