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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (10549)	2/1/2006 6:09:12 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541774

(a theoretical social program that combined taxes on the working poor and cash payments to the idle rich from the proceeds of the tax would be redistributionist by my definition). I agree with that. You did say "theoretical." I can't imagine that in practice. I don't see how either of our definitions, could fit with calling tax cuts redistributionist. One of the problems with using "redistributionist" in the context of taxes is that it can only be viewed incrementally, from one tax change to the next. All tax changes are redistributionist in that they redistribute the current tax burden. It's pretty meaningless if you shift one way and then you shift back the next time but a lesser amount. You lose track pretty quickly of which way is up. When you think about it non-incrementally, income taxes inherently redistributes up given that there used to be no income tax at all and everything is up from there. I think that, in the context of taxes, the word is much more useful as a call to arms among the faithful than for anything analytical.