Most folks will say this scenario is farfetched. But it’s worth pondering. Is there truly a tax-the-rich hidden agenda in Washington that goes far beyond the Obama budget?
I wonder about this simply because there’s a much better way to recoup the misbegotten AIG bonuses. Though no one in Congress is paying any attention to beleaguered Treasury man Tim Geithner, he explained in a March 17 letter to Nancy Pelosi that the Treasury “will impose on AIG a contractual commitment to pay the Treasury from the operations of the company the amount of the retention awards just paid. In addition, we will deduct from the $30 billion in assistance an amount equal to the amount of those payments.” So the AIG bonus problem can be remedied in a much calmer and simpler way than returning to 90 percent tax rates.
But the bigger point is this: A 90 percent tax rate on financial bonuses is so punitive that it will surely drive away the best and brightest from the very banks that must heal the credit system. Do we really want D-minus students -- who are willing to accept massive tax punishment -- in charge of a trillion dollars in taxpayer money and spearheading economic recovery? The perverse incentives of tax retribution against AIG and other TARPed banks will surely backfire, and taxpayers and economic recovery will take the hit.
You see, taxes matter. They hugely impact economic behavior. The whole economic system is run on incentives to work, invest, and take risks. And it must pay, after tax, to ignite the entrepreneurial activity that really drives the economy. Like it or not, our free-market capitalist system is driven by the economic activist, provided he or she is properly rewarded.
So the real battle here in fact could be a war between the left wing of the Democratic party and the Reagan supply-side incentive model of economic growth.
Republicans in the House who just voted for massively high marginal tax rates had better think twice. When financial calm returns to the country, the GOP will not want to be accomplice to a confiscatory tax system that will stifle the economy and push America into decline for decades to come.