quarta-feira, 1 de outubro de 2003

The Neocon Welfare State

Capítulo 21 de "Making Economic Sense", Rothbard em 1992

"Neocons are the most enthusiastic fans of the federal deficit since the Left-Keynesians of the 1930s. We can expect, then, much bigger deficits, accompanied by a large and innovative battery of excuses. Statistics will be dredged up to the effect that the deficit and the debt "really aren't so bad," compared, say, with some year during World War II, or, that on deep and murky philosophic grounds, they really don't exist.

On taxes, we can probably trust neocons to keep marginal income tax rates on upper brackets down, as well as to cut capital gains taxes, but the sky's the limit on everything else. We can look forward to a lot more of the "loophole closing" that helped send the real estate market into a long and continuing tailspin after the Tax Reform Act of 1986. We can also look forward to increases in excise taxes, and perhaps a national sales or value-added tax.

Harry Hopkins is supposed to have outlined the basic New Deal Strategy: "We shall tax and tax, spend and spend, elect and elect." He might have added: control and control. Over the decades, the outer forms, the glittering trappings, have changed in order to entice new generations of suckers. But the essence of the ever-expanding Leviathan has remained the same."

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