How the heck does keeping the tax rates the same 'cost' the government anything?

I have mentioned many times in this blog the liberal notion that tax cuts "cost" the government. Implicit in that very concept is the idea that all money is the governments, and therefore anything they don't confiscate is somehow a benevolence towards us. Stacy McCain calls this wrong, wrong, WRONG. It is OUR money - the fruits of OUR labor. That liberal mindset was perhaps best exemplified in August, for which I wrote this: Paul Krugman: All money is government's money

I have said many times in this blog that one of the more insidious mindsets out there right now is the notion that a tax cut is equivalent to giving people money. Except that the government doesn't have any of its own money. It is all taxpayer money. When a tax cut is enacted, the government doesn't give you money, you simply give less of your own to the government. That has not sunk in yet to Paul Krugman and those like him. ...(Krugman) wrote:

But these [Republicans] are eager to cut checks averaging $3 million each to the richest 120,000 people in the country. … And where would this $680 billion go?  Nearly all of it would go to the richest 1 percent of Americans, people with incomes of more than $500,000 a year. … How can this kind of giveaway be justified …?

Earth to Krugman - it's their earned money, not yours and not the government's. The above is the mindset of the statist believing all wealth to be the government's and anything not confiscated a giveaway to the earners. So much for the federal government being a limited one, no? Based on the above quote, one last point I'd make is that the 'rich' that keeping more of their own money tend to do something with it. They tend not to just stuff it in the mattress, but rather invest it in stocks, bond, mutual funds, etc. That's a whole lot more value added than what the government ends up doing with it by rewarding non-productivity.

The mindeset of the liberal has regressed even further. At this point in time, not only is it a cost to have people give less money to the government (ie - tax cuts), but it has now been deemed that not confiscating more money (ie - keeping taxes steady and not raising them) is a cost to the government. Somehow. From Washington Wire via memeorandum: The Number: $858 Billion

The Obama-McConnell tax compromise will cost $858 billion over the next 10 years, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.

In other words, the Republican-backed tax plan will cost more than the stimulus bill, which priced out at $787 billion.

For starters, extending all of the Bush tax cuts for two years will cost a total $675.2 billion over 10 years, according to a Dec. 3 Congressional Research Service study. Setting the estate tax at 35%, adding an exemption for estates under $5 million, knocking 2 percentage points off employees' portion of the Social Security payroll tax, and the cost quickly goes up.

So, how does the U.S. pay the bill?

Bill? What bill? It's OUR money, not yours! There is no bill because WE didn't order anything. Speaking of, here's a novel idea: STOP. SPENDING. OUR. MONEY. Especially on things that are not authorized by the US Constitution, which is to say most of what the government is spending money on. Even the great Charles Krathammer gets this wrong in his WaPo piece: Swindle of the year, insisting that the tax rates cost the government something. Judge Napolitano hits this statist mentality straight on in this segment:

As far as tax policy goes, this is quite relevant too: Not only does bottom 47% of taxpayers pay no federal income tax, but the bottom 40% GET MONEY BACK! That goes right along in consistency with a prior post of mine: 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair Poll: 50% of Americans that don't pay taxes thinks "rich" people ought to pay more, even though top 1% pay more than bottom 95%
Note that the bottom 50% pay almost no taxes, while the top 5% pay about 60% of the federal tax bill. I agree with one thing - this isn't fair. But I think it is the rich that are paying too much, only to be sneered at by those that pay nothing at all and get OUR money back from the government. It's now gotten so bad, so unfair, that the top 1% pay more in federal taxes than the bottom 95%: The rich are paying far more than their fair share, and instead of being thanked are demonized by Obama and their ilk. We should indeed be thanking the rich:

http://theblogprof.blogspot.com/2010/12/how-heck-does-keeping-tax-rates-same.html

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