[What'saCobra?]

Insisting on the current tax rates in the face of considerable evidence that they are currently too high, is as sensible as insisting on keeping the current temperature climates, despite considerable evidence that higher temperatures would benefit most societies (reduce starvation rates, weather disasters and much more).

President Obama was pointedly asked if he was aware that by reducing the marginal income tax rates (as previously used by JFK, Reagan and BushII) more total taxes would be collected and be available for government spending (you might rather call it investment, rather than my pork, favors and million bridges to nowhere). (Who would have thought that Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens was right all along about over-spending on his "ear-mark" "shovel-ready" "bridge to nowhere"?)

The President stated that while he knew that more total tax revenues might indeed be collected, he thought the lower rates (for everyone, including the "Rich") would be "unfair" because it reduced taxes on the rich.

How can this be understood?

There is little economic logic in it, but there it lots of political strategy. Our first socialist President cannot admit widely and publicly that "lower" rates ought to be implemented, as the Democrat party has fought this philosophical, financial and economic point for nearing 100 years. It was only when JFK was faced with total political and economic disaster that he forced his party to pass lower rates and significantly improved economic activity and collected more total tax revenues. At the time, the largest increase in taxes, both dollar and percentage rates, was from the rich, who simply cannot eat the money they save on lower rates, but must make it work through investment (think jobs) or big ticket purchases (think jobs).

Unless it is under your mattress, money never just sits. It is always working for someone, somewhere. If it is in a yacht, even if the yacht depreciates, it provides jobs in maintenance, repair, operations, supply, etc. If it is in stock, bonds or deposits, it works every night as it clears in and out of accounts and provides liquidity for other investments, whilst also providing rental income to the deposit bank.

Actually, the current marginal tax rates are far more than optimal for the collection of maximum revenues. Considerable evidence indicate that perhaps 15% would be optimum, but certainly not anything like 39%. It is a long story, requiring considerable reading and historical review, but it can be shown to the inquiring mind that is not brain-washed with Liberalist social theory. Lowering tax rates (not taxes, but rates) increases the pie size enough to more than make up for the lower marginal rates, rather than lowering tax revenues. For example: 37% of $100 taxable income collects less than 25% of $200 taxable income. Don't laugh at that simplicity. It IS the point.

Strategically, the democrat party cannot allow this point to ever work into the body politic, as it is antithetical to their political history and "soak the rich" storyboard intended to divide the masses into competing groups and conquering the much larger but poorer group as their pigeons (though they might rather prefer to use "party cadre"). Many very intelligent Democrat politicians recognized this point down the decades and voted for tax rate reductions. For example, Daniel Patrick Moynahan well understood and approved of lower tax rates, because he was both bright enough to listen and learn, but still courageous enough to ignore his party platitudes; which habits he thought wrongly increased the potential for the unnecessary division of the electorate by race, gender, age and income, all to our mutual disadvantage...

Perhaps this is not the place to enter into a long note on marginal tax rates, but the point is that we DO NOT KNOW what are the exact optimum tax rates, any more than we DO NOT KNOW the most optimum global temperature averages. For instance, a 5 degree C increase in average global temperatures would provide millions of square miles of more habitable and harvestable land in both the northern and southern hemispheres. Greenland would again be green (pst! It used to be! Read Danish and Norwegian history.)

However, despite AlGore's uncontested lectures given on the coldest and snowiest days of the winter, we cannot force or change global averages by any agreed methodology, up or down. But, tax rates CAN be and ARE changed rather frequently, as governments attempt to "improve" our various societies.

It is unfortunate that the amount of public knowledge and education about modern econometrics and historical records, both micro and macro, is so limited that a "knee-jerk" reaction to proposed reductions in marginal tax rates is proposed for intelligent justification of the current confiscatory rates. "...I do not like tax cuts!" isn't very convincing as either political or economic political justification. Which is why it is frequently yelled at the top of their lungs, eyes widened and accompanied by both other homey platitudes and coarse language, as if emotion and volume defeat intellect, facts and patience.

i suppose that given that so many can neither read, write, spell or comprehend adequately enough of even what they have written or yelled themselves, i ought to stop being surprised.

So, for the record, in a similar vein of emotionalism rather than only common sense or logic, i remain soundly "against higher tax rates", but for historical and commonly accepted sound economic reasons based on both theory and practice, here and abroad.