This page was last updated on November 8, 2011.
When is the right time to raise taxes?; Jerry Miskulin; Beaver County Times; November 3, 2011.
I encourage you to review Mr. Miskulin’s body of work in the archives. Mr. Miskulin has written at least 76 letters since 2004 (I didn’t critique all of them.). Most (all?) are illogical and full of falsehoods (not just wrong).
Mr. Miskulin expressed displeasure with the tea parties (here and here), proclaimed
Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.
“When is the proper time to raise taxes according to the Republicans?”
[RWC] Democrats were the majority party in both houses of Congress for four years (including a short time with a filibuster-proof Senate) until January 2011 and held the White House for the last two of those years. If increasing tax rates were such a good idea, why didn’t Democrats do so when Republicans could do nothing to stop it?
On December 6, 2010, Mr. Obama finally conceded, “Make no mistake: Allowing taxes to go up on all Americans would have raised taxes by $3,000 for a typical American family. And that could cost our economy well over a million jobs.”
“Now that we are in a recession is it the time to raise taxes? No. During a recovery is it a proper time to raise taxes? No.”
[RWC] Here’s a question for Mr. Miskulin: What is the proper time for an employer to cut an employee’s pay? Increasing tax rates has the same effect as cutting pay; both take money from a family’s paycheck.
“According to the Republicans of Ronald Reagan’s generation, it is never appropriate to raise taxes.”
[RWC] Mr. Reagan would have celebrated his 100th birthday this year. I could be wrong, but I suspect there are relatively few “Republicans of Ronald Reagan’s generation” still with us. In any case, I think it’s fair to say Mr. Reagan supported taxation appropriate to fund limited government but nothing more.
Can someone explain to me why folks like Mr. Miskulin are hell-bent on getting our tax rates increased?
“Sigmund Freud once said in dreams opposites can stand side by side for economy’s sake. Well we have that now with both welfare recipients and rich Republicans living off government dole. Only it’s the Republicans who are taking us in the ‘hole.’”
[RWC] Exactly how do “rich Republicans liv[e] off government dole?” What about rich Democrats? In addition to property taxes, sales taxes, et cetera, based on 2008 federal income tax data, the top 1% (AGI greater than $380,000) of filers paid 38% of the total and the top 5% (AGI greater than $160,000) paid 59%.
“What’s happened to them for God’s sake?”
[RWC] It’s my understanding Mr. Miskulin appeared to be a bright guy in high school in the early to mid-1970s. “What’s happened to [him] for God’s sake?”
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