March 24, 2011
Back in the old days news outlets used to try to have people associated with a political position represent that position. In other words, they used to have conservatives represent conservative positions, liberals represent liberal positions, etc. It just seemed reasonable to have the people who actually held a particular political standpoint present that standpoint to the public.
But, that was then. Now, with the ascendancy of the right over national politics, there is no reason to waste valuable space in major media outlets allowing those who are left of center to express their views. There are plenty of conservatives who regularly express their views in the opinion and news sections. Why not let some of them also express the views of those who are left of center as well?
This obviously was the position taken by the Washington Post when it decided to have Robert Pozen, a finance industry executive and advocate of Social Security privatization, tell liberals what their position should be on Social Security. David Leonhardt highlighted Pozen’s “liberal plan” in his NYT blogpost today.
The gist of Mr. Pozen’s proposal is to leave benefits mostly unchanged for the lowest wage earners while reducing benefits and raising the retirement age for middle income workers like school teachers, construction workers and fire fighters. By reducing the benefits for those in the middle, Mr. Pozen wants to make Social Security more “progressive.” Naturally liberals who were troubled by high-living nurses and plumbers will rally behind this bold effort at redistributing income.
In keeping with this spirit, suppose that we had a media that tilted as much to the left as the current outlets tilt to the right. Obviously, people like me would have the opportunity to lay out what the conservative position should be on reforming the income tax code.
So, here’s the outline of my proposal which the Post will be running next week. It will leave income taxes largely unchanged on the bottom 98 percent of taxpayers. We will raise the marginal tax rate to 50 percent on incomes between $250,000 and $10,000,000. Then we would have a zero tax bracket for income over $10,000,000. This means that the richest of the rich will pay considerably less under the Baker plan than under the current tax code. This should accomplish the upward redistribution that is central to the right’s political agenda.
I can’t wait to see my column in the Post and highlighted as a conservative plan for tax reform in Leonhardt’s blog.
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