Back in early April (the fourth, to be exact), we sent yet another letter to the Wall Street Journal about one of their editorials. There seemed to be some little confusion between the role of taxes, and the role of financial institutions in funding economic growth. Naturally we put in our two cents:
Dear Sir(s):
In “Beware Tax Reform That Raises Taxes on Capital,” Margo
Thorning stated, “Investment, growth and job creation should be the
cornerstones of any tax-reform effort.”
On the contrary, the sole legitimate purpose of taxation is to raise
revenue to defray the costs of government, not engage in social engineering.
“Investment, growth and job creation” are concerns of the
private sector financial system: commercial banks backed up by the Federal
Reserve, not government. Attempting to
do the job of the private sector has loaded governments throughout the world
with massive unproductive debt and left the global economy in shambles.
As Dr. Harold G. Moulton, president of the Brookings
Institution from 1928 to 1952, explained in The
Formation of Capital (1935) and The
New Philosophy of Public Debt (1943), rapid and sustainable economic growth
was historically financed by the expansion of bank credit based on the present
value of future marketable goods and services produced by the new capital by discounting and rediscounting bills of exchange,
not past savings or increases in government debt.
As Louis Kelso and Mortimer Adler explained in The Capitalist Manifesto (1958) and The New Capitalists (1961), the mass
purchasing power essential to sustain economic growth can be achieved by
vesting formerly propertyless people with capital ownership financed using such
“future savings.”
Yours, blah, blah.
#30#