# How does lower taxes imply more freedom? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 9, 2016, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-lower-taxes-imply-more-freedom/774312 "2016-12-09T22:57:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![DinoR](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dinor/32/2821_2.png) [@DinoR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DinoR)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2016, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-lower-taxes-imply-more-freedom/774312/21 "2016-12-10T17:45:35Z")
> [@R3d\_Anonymous](#): > > Bernie Sanders’ tax plan would not have negatively affected about 96% of Americans. Untrue. Let’s jump past the Time article JohnMace lionked to and look at the analyses of his tax plans by the [Tax Foundation](http://taxfoundation.org/article/details-and-analysis-senator-bernie-sanders-s-tax-plan) (TF) and the [Tax Policy Center](http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/analysis-senator-bernie-sanderss-tax-proposals/full) (TPC) While they differ, based on different modeling assumptions, they both disagree with your description of Sanders’ plan. > [@TF](#): > > A majority of the revenue raised by the Sanders plan would come from a new 6.2 percent employer-side payroll tax, a new 2.2 percent broad-based income tax, and the elimination of tax expenditures relating to healthcare. So that’s a 6.2% flat tax and a 2.2% mostly flat tax as big drivers of his revenue increases. Ooops. In addition there was a proposed .2% employee side payroll tax to fund paid family leave. Likely a portion of the employer matching .2% for the same program would have been passed on over time in the form of lower wages, depending on the nature of the subsets of the labor market. > [@TPC](#): > > The proposal would raise taxes at every income level, but high income taxpayers would face the biggest increases… > > Households in the middle quintile of the income distribution would see an average tax increase of almost $4,700, or 8.5 percent of their average after-tax income. Those in the bottom quintile would experience smaller tax increases, averaging $165, or 1.3 percent of their average after-tax income Really, everybody would have paid more under his proposals. It’s not much for the poorest but it’s not an insignificant amount for the middle class. It’s not what the snappy campaign slogans may have told you. You really only look at the static impact of the tax plan not how the economy would adjust in relation, aka the dynamic results. What do the analyses have to say about that > [@TF](#): > > According to the Tax Foundation’s Taxes and Growth Model, Senator Bernie Sanders’s tax plan would reduce the economy’s size by 9.5 percent in the long run. The plan would lead to 4.3 percent lower wages, an 18.6 percent smaller capital stock, and 6.0 million fewer full-time equivalent jobs. The smaller economy results from higher marginal tax rates on capital and labor income. Those are real costs to citizens even if they don’t show up on their 1040. They aren’t tax increases but they are the result of tax increases. Any good consideration of whether a tax plan is worthwhile needs to include, as best as modeling allows, all the costs and benefits. TPC references some of the challenges that could produce dynamic effects but doesn’t give a specific dynamic analysis. Some of that potentially counters pieces of the TF dynamic analysis if you look at possible multipliers from certain spending programs - . There’s also potential risks identified on the spending side they don’t model, like whether the revenue wouldn’t be more than offset by higher spending from his other proposals. Increasing deficits could spur higher interest rates on government borrowing giving us the double whammy of both needing to spend even on debt service while the economy slows, further reducing revenue, due to the higher interest rates. Even without any specific number there’s a lot of interesting food for thought in booth of the analyses. Ultimately it doesn’t matter since he couldn’t get even the majority of Democrats to agree with him. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [December 10, 2016, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-lower-taxes-imply-more-freedom/774312/22 "2016-12-10T23:07:35Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > For anti-statists, lower taxes means less revenue for the government to provide a social safety net, regulate, etc. They feel the state is the biggest threat to their freedom, and view lower taxes as reducing the power of the state. This is my understanding of the matter … giving the gubbermint more money to control our lives restricts liberty … like hiring wildlife refuge rangers to keep cattle out … ---
**Author:** ![doubleminus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5daacb/32.png) [@doubleminus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doubleminus)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2016, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-lower-taxes-imply-more-freedom/774312/23 "2016-12-12T03:35:11Z")
I would like to include here a (lengthy) quote from a wonderful book named _The Nordic Theory of Everything_ by a Finnish young reporter that falls in love with an American writer and relocated to New York. She contrasts the life in Finland to the one in New York without criticizing, but pointing out many mistaken beliefs of Americans about themselves and the world. > [@](#): > > Most people, including myself, assumed that part of what made the United States a great country, and such an exceptional one, was that you could live your life relatively unencumbered by the downside of a traditional, old-fashioned society: dependency on the people you happened to be stuck with. In America you had the liberty to express your individuality and choose your own community. This would allow you to interact with family, neighbors, and fellow citizens on the basis of who you were, rather than on what you were obligated to do or expected to be according to old-fashioned thinking. > > The longer I lived in America, therefore, and the more places I visited and the more people I met—and the more American I myself became—the more puzzled I opportunity—that seemed, from my outsider’s perspective, in a thousand small ways to be surprisingly missing from American life today. Amid the anxiety and stress of people’s daily lives, those grand ideals were looking more theoretical than actual. > > This wasn’t just in New York City, nor was it limited to certain social classes. As I ventured beyond New York to rural Maine, to Washington, DC, to small-town Ohio, to southern Virginia, to the West Coast, what struck me was not that people felt they had a great deal of freedom, or could fully be individuals, or enjoyed a fair shake at success. Rather, in order to compete and to survive, the Americans I encountered and read about were being forced to depend more and more on one another, in a throwback to the traditional relationships of old. And in the process, individuals were becoming beholden to their spouses, parents, children, colleagues, and bosses in ways that constrained their own liberty. The demands and tensions caused by this state of affairs seemed to be making everyone’s stress and anxiety even worse—even in the areas of life that they cherished the most, such as right at home, in the family. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-lower-taxes-imply-more-freedom/774312.md?page=1)