In his column yesterday, Dr. Paul Krugman argues for raising the top marginal income tax rates on January 1.  His polemic is useful because it encapsulates most of the Left’s arguments.

Language trick #1: “We” (the government) should not “give money to the rich.”

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 …?

In this view of the world, revenues belong to the government and are allocated by policymakers as gifts to those who need or deserve them.  When you hear that “we cannot afford to cut taxes” and “we should not give tax cuts to ______,” you are hearing this philosophy.

Like a family or a business, the government does not “pay for,” “finance,” or “afford,” its revenue stream or changes to it.  You pay for your spending or you finance your spending.  If your revenues are insufficient to meet your spending, then in all other contexts we say you cannot afford the amount you’re spending.  The same should be true for the government.

Money doesn’t just magically appear in the government coffers.  A private citizen or firm earns income and the government takes a portion of that income.  The money initially belongs to he or she who earned it.  Using “we” to refer to the government suggests the funds being spent by the government belong to the government.  This matters because if the money belongs to the government, then elected officials should apply their moral principles to figure out who needs or deserves it most.  If the money belongs first to he or she who earned it, then elected officials should apply their moral principles to figure out whether they should take it from the earner and spend it on something else or give it to someone else.  Those are fundamentally different decisions.  The first philosophy ignores the costs (moral and economic) of government taking something from someone who earned it.

Full post here