By Hunter Wallace
In The Wall Street Journal, Mort Kondracke and Fred Barnes – both Republican establishment regulars on FOX News – are pining for a Jack Kemp Republican in 2016:
“Kemp was a pivotal political leader because, as the foremost exponent of supply-side economics, he persuaded his party and later Ronald Reagan to adopt his tax-cut plan, known as “Kemp-Roth.” The top tax rate on individual income dropped in 1981 to 50% from 70%. Then Kemp helped pioneer tax reform, and the top rate fell in 1986 to 28%. Middle-income taxpayers enjoyed similar cuts. …
Some candidates are trying. Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and Marco Rubio have put forward interesting economic plans. Even Donald Trump says he will have a tax plan shortly. Mr. Bush’s tax reform initiative, with its top rate of 28%, is especially Kemp-like. …
The Republican Party and the country do need another Jack Kemp. The GOP debates and primaries ought to be about finding one”
Mort and Fred obviously had ¡Jeb! in mind when they claim “the essence of America is the “right to rise,” but Trump goes even further down the Jack Kemp road of supply-side economics:
“As for the (ludicrous) plan itself: It’s as though Trump read a copy of the Jeb Bush plan, thought about it for a moment, and then tossed it at an underling, yelling, “We should do this, but make it more tremendous, more marvelous!” That’s pretty much what Trump is offering. Bush would cut the top income tax rate for rich people to 28 percent, Trump to 25 percent. Bush would lower the corporate tax rate to 20 percent, Trump to 15 percent. Bush would take 15 million Americans off the income tax rolls, Trump would take off 75 million — all of whom, according to Trump, would get “a new one page form to send the IRS saying, ‘I win.'” Oh, and while the Bush plan would lose $3 trillion over a decade — not counting economic feedback — Trump’s might lose multiples of that. No amount of “dynamic scoring” is likely to make Trump’s numbers even approach balance.”
Here’s some perspective:
Trump’s tax plan would take the top rate on individuals down to where it was – 25 percent – during Herbert Hoover’s presidency on the eve of the Great Depression. Just like in the 1920s, it is a surefire prescription for an even more powerful oligarchy and even greater extremes of wealth than what we already have today.
Do you think Millennials – the Boomerang generation – already have it bad now? Just imagine how much worse it would be with the massive spending cuts that Trump’s plan would require. Far from “taking back America,” this will only stimulate Occupy Wall Street and Bernie Sanders-style populist movements which like Obama in 2008 any number of nutty leftwing social reforms could piggyback into power.
He needs white working dudes.
Does this help?
Trump is going to run a conventional Republican campaign: a bright shiny tax cut for the wealthy at the core and various other proposals as bait to attract a broader swath of voters.
What did Reagan and George W. Bush do? Predictably, the first item on their agenda was the tax cut. They both pushed amnesty for illegal aliens later in their terms.
Regardless of what you think of Trump’s plan, Hunter is right that the Democrats are going to paint this as a complete giveaway to the super wealthy and will say that it will create huge deficits and massive cuts so that the super wealthy can get tax cuts. Will it work with the swing states? It has before so my bet is yes.
Maybe Trump will be able to sell it like Romney wasn’t able to but either way he has given his opponents a major issue to attack him on.
He should have raised taxes on the top 1 percent, lowered the rest.
Hunter Wallace
‘Trump has effectively lost the election.’
Serious?
Hunter Wallace: ‘If he wins the nomination, whoever opposes him will frame him as Mitt Romney on steroids. Rather than taking the issue away, he has done exactly the opposite here.’
I don’t care for Romney’s cuck attitudes when it applies to race, but he sure as hell would have been infinitely better for the economy, jobs, growth and prosperity than the Commie, Muslim anti-White fag in the Black House.
As for the issues? Building a wall, deporting invaders and criminals, eliminating sanctuary cities and ditching anchor baby foolishness resonates with a huge segment of the population.
With me -immigration- is the issue eclipsing everything else in importance.
Without that nothing else matters in the long run.
Trump ain’t Romney.
Trump owns THE issue.
And yes, we need factories, manufacturing and a better business climate. Fair trade, not free trade, if you will.
We’ve lost too much to to other countries.
Absolutely.
Like I said above, it will give Hillary, Biden, or Sanders all the ammunition they need to portray Trump as a billionaire running on a platform of making life “terrific” for other billionaires.
We have short memories.
After the 2012 election, we found out that Romney and Ryan had been lying all along on immigration. After the 2014 election, we found out that the Republicans would use Congress to pass Obamatrade, not to defund amnesty.
Here is what could happen. Trump goes to build the wall or start deportation. Supreme court steps in and stops it. Trump says “Well folks, I tried but we have to obey the supreme court – they have ruled!”
Of course, his tax plan will pass with flying colors and no opposition.
I still support Trump at this time because I have nothing to lose but I can totally get where Hunter is coming from. He has zero trust in these people and considering what we have been dealing with for years it is totally understandable.
Yep.
That’s exactly what I fear will happen: Republicans in Congress will throw their entire weight behind the tax cut, as they did with Reagan and Bush, but will join with Democrats to block the immigration plan.
But that’s all he’s been from the beginning. He just sold the rubes on the idea that he understands the common man and will build this great big wall to protect our interests. It’s Political Posturing 101. Nothing more, nothing less.
They never built the wall that passed Congress in 2006.
“They never built the wall that passed Congress in 2006.”
Oh yeah that’s right. I forgot about that one. Ha!
1.) In Gilded Age America, at least the high tariffs benefited all the foreign workers in the Northern manufacturing belt. What libertarians are proposing on trade policy is more like the working poor of Victorian Britain in the late 19th century.
2.) As Victorian Britain shows, the suffering ofbthr working class was due to libertarian economics, not to damage from war.
3.) Don’t libertarians want to return to the gold standard and decry the Fed for it’s soft money policies?
4.) I was referring to all the Depression-era reforms that had nothing to do with WW2. Among other things, the long pause in immigration, high taxes on the wealthy, the mechanization of agriculture in the South, the TVA, the Glass Steagall Act, Social Security, the Wagner Act, etc.
But that’s the great thing about being a politician in today’s climate. All you have to do is say you are going to do something and the voters eat it up. You don’t have to actually do it. Conservative voters are especially credulous when it comes to people telling them things that they want to hear. When was the last time a Republican actually followed through with a campaign promise that didn’t falter and crumble when it ran into anti-White/Leftist opposition?
10,000 lies and broken campaign promises, and Republican voters tend to only want to focus on the 1 time one of their politicians actually followed through with something. That’s not just a recipe for losing elections and slowly eroding political relevance, it’s also a recipe for losing control of a country.
If the FedGov has been so good to the South then there is no point of secession. Period. If Southerners secede, we lose all of the FedGov’s blessings and we return back to the during the Gilded Age. You should have a word with the Florida LoS and their “Feds out of Florida” placards. Remind them how much the Federal government has helped Southerners.
The Southern Nationalist movement should just pack up and go home.
In whiteland, there will be none of this never-ending U.S. nonsense. Look at these ridiculous disputes. The liberals constantly provide government “services,” which must be funded with taxes. The Republicans, unable to eliminate the services, try to eliminate the symptom thereof, i.e., the taxation, and are then charged with fiscal irresponsibility (because of the resulting deficits). The so-called services themselves are a constant drain on white productivity; the constant wrangling over them–or over the taxation, which is a mere consequence of the services’ existence–drains white nervous energy.
In whiteland, race and property will be protected. Mestizo? Negro? Jew? Arab? East Asian? South Asian? You’re out. We don’t care how much you contribute to a meaningless abstraction known as the economy.
Government services? There will be no government “services,” i.e., there will be no forced exchange and no forced donation. There will be only governance–the courts, the police, the military–and maybe, maybe, infrastructure that can’t be arranged as private property.
More than once, I’ve said it here, at Occidental Dissent–and I’ll say it again: the Founding Fathers accomplished nothing. Our vaunted Constitution yields nothing but the constant wrangling, contention, over subjects such as this latest tax “plan” (which happens to be Trump’s). In whiteland, race and property will be protected. Everything else will follow from that.
I just don’t buy into the libertarian paradigm which sees government as an absolute evil and individual freedom as an absolute good.
It seems to me that government has done a number of good things: the National Park system, saving endangered species like the buffalo, the TVA, NASA, the GI Bill, the Wagner Act, the Glass Steagall Act, banning child labor, Social Security, and so on.
In other countries, government has been used to curtail Jewish influence, broaden prosperity and mute class division, curtail the power of a donor class to corrupt elections with bribery, etc. So I think who controls the government and the policies it chooses to implement is the more important consideration than just writing off “the state” as evil.
Do I think the Florida League would hesitate to, say, use the authority of “the state” to deport the hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens in Florida? Not really.
BTW, it is Florida’s low tax/low regulation business climate which is driving it’s demographic transformation into a Sunbelt Babylon, so native Floridians might want to rethink libertarian economics.
If a Whiteland was ever achieved, it would be destroyed from within by the Nikki Haleys of the world and their gospel of Chamber of Commercism.
My sentiments exactly.
“I just don’t buy into the libertarian paradigm which sees government as an absolute evil and individual freedom as an absolute good.”
Neither do I. I said there will be no forced exchange and no forced donation. Fine–things such as the cordoning off of territory as parks or other entities not to be available as private property: that’s governance, as is the “cordoning off” of plants and animals, that they might not be made extinct. Social Security? No–that’s forced exchange or donation or both. It’s constructed so that it becomes almost impossible to speak of it clearly. Government-run schools? They’re forced exchange or donation. They’re forced exchange in that a teacher is being compensated, via taxation, for his or her service; they’re forced donation in that they’re available to everyone, regardless of the amount he or she pays in taxes for them–or whether he or she pays taxes for them at all. Again: they’re constructed, as are all government “services,” so that it becomes almost impossible to say clearly whether they represent forced exchange, donation, or both.
In whiteland, no white man will be forced to spend, i.e., to engage, under threat (from government), in exchange or donation. Taxation for police, the courts, and the military? For parks and other territories that the government might cordon off? For infrastructure that can’t be arranged as private property? For exploration? Yes. For schools; pension funds; medical care; “recreation centers”; “public” swimming pools; scientific research other than that connected directly to, say, weapons research? No.
Libertarians understand what government truly is. It is an institution with a monopoly on the use of violence. Everything the government does is backed up by force. From a libertarian perspective, there should be an objective measure to justify the use of force and not just a subjective measure of what some of us considers to be “good.” Most minarchist believe that maintaining order is an objective good. Things like having criminal courts, enforcement of contracts, enforcing property rights, police, national defense are objective goods that society needs in order for it to be orderly. What most libertarians find egregious about government uses its monopoly on the use of violence to accomplish subjective “goods” or to serve private interest. I am sure you can provide a laundry list things that you consider to be good that you would like to see the government do. But what about things that you don’t consider to be good that you are forced to pay for. For example, do you think that it is good for government schools to teach multiculturalism? I’m sure you don’t but someone else disagrees but you are still forced to pay for it. What about foreign wars? I’m sure you don’t but neocons are happy to pass the bill onto you. What about Federal bureaucracies that costs tax dollars but provide little benefit to you? I can provide a longer list of government “services” that you don’t like than the ones you do. All in all, you are forced to pay for them whether you like them or not.
These are all things that have been brought to us by the Federal government. I don’t understand why you wish to secede. Instead, you should be grateful for it.
In modern times, only Hitler and Stalin comes to my mind. I would rather not live under either.
By your value system, the Federal government is doing a great job. Secession would be a bad idea for Southerners.
I guarantee you that those who control government will always be someone that you or I will disapprove of. That’s why the system can never be reformed. A central government with so much power will always attract the worst of the worst.
I am in the top tax bracket.
Great plan, Trump!
Hungarian national conservatives win.
American paleoconservatives lose.
Why?
Unlike national conservatives, paleocons are hobbled by doctrinaire libertarianism – the official ideology of autism.
I would recommend that you advise the Florida LoS to change their signs to read “Immigrants Out Of Florida”
The Feds need to stay.
Then what’s driving the demographic change in high tax California?
My guess is that Florida’s beautiful year ’round weather has a lot to do with the demographic change. Also, it’s proximity to Caribbean has drawn in a lot of Cuban and Hatian refugees and Puerto Ricans.
1.) Like I said above, “government” has done a number of things across history which I support. Should we bring back polio, illiteracy, and child labor?
2.) According to classical liberals, the government is always bad, and the free market is always good. I don’t think most White people see it that way though.
I will give you an example: should the buffalo have been hunted to extinction like the passenger pigeon?
3.) I don’t see government as being intrinsically good or evil. Libertarians, however, object to “statist” concepts like national borders and economic policies which favor native born citizens over foreigners. It would also be “authoritarian” to expel millions of illegal aliens.
4.) Still, Hitler used the power of the state to curtail Jewish influence in Germany. What do you propose should be done about the problem?
5.) Unlike libertarians, I’m not willing to indict everything that “government” has done. Should we yearn for the return of polio, small pox, and measles? How about malaria and the yellow jack?
1.) According to libertarians, Somalia should be thriving given the collapse of the authority of “the state” there for the past twenty years.
2.) No, but I don’t see any necessary connection between public schools and multiculturism. I don’t like multiculturalism, but I don’t blame “the state” for it when “the state” used to promote the exact opposite viewpoint.
3.) Libertarians look at Social Security and Medicare making life more comfortable for the elderly and see a national tragedy. National borders are a similarly problematic obstacle to the global marketplace.
You know they don’t include SSI taxes in this and what matters is what comes out of your paycheck.
I’m disappointed. Trump was talking down the hedge funds but he’s just going to make them stronger. I think he made a mistake.
Absolutely.
Florida’s weather does attract Northern transplants, but so does its low tax/low regulation business climate. Texas has the same problem.
I’ve never gotten the impression that we want to secede in order to perform an ideological experiment in libertarian ideology.
Hunter Wallace, on the topic of government, it really does depend on the people being governed. I am white and live in South Africa, and the government really provides me with zero benefits, one is expected to pay for private hospitals, private schools, private security, privates pensions. The government takes my money and I really get nothing for it, other than not throwing me in jail should I not pay. Further more, being white means the government sees you as nothing more than a cash cow and at times as a political tool to show how whites are too rich.
I certainly support a limited government as much as possible, and I suspect that whites in America will have to, because it will increasingly become like the government in South Africa, a corrupt money leech and absolutely provide you nothing in return.
In South Africa, the problem is black supremacy and the exploitation of the White minority. It is about who rules whom rather than “government” or “the state” being inherently diabolical. If you were living in Iceland, you would have a high standard of living.
“Libertarians look at Social Security and Medicare making life more comfortable for the elderly and see a national tragedy.”
Gee, Mr. W., I see you’ve been reading “How to Argue Like a Liberal”–or does it come naturally to you?
Trump has done serious self-sabotage here. I was hoping for Huey Long, and we got Arthur Laffer.
In our proposed ethnostate, we would still have politics.
There will be people who still see the eradication of polio and measles as government tyranny, who are indifferent when species like the wild turkey and whitetail deer are hunted to extinction, who have no problem with child labor and malnutrition, who do not support workplace safety laws, who believe the stock market shouldn’t be regulated, who oppose public education, who oppose socialist schemes like the TVA, and so on.
Yeah it’s an autistic tax paper.
Probably irrelevant to the race conflict that Trump would most likely precipitate with his Wall.
Let’s kick out the Arabs and Indios, and expel the Jews by default. And suppress the uppity negro.
I wouldn’t advocate bringing back polio any more than bringing back the bubonic plague. Your question presumes that if it weren’t for the government we would all be suffering from polio. Why would you assume that? There is a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical that finds cures and effective treatments for numerous diseases. There are also private charities that support medical research (Jonas Salk’s work was supported in part by the National Foundation on Infantile Paralysis). Today we have numerous technical marvels and life saving surgeries, treatments and cures for numerous diseases and maladies. But somehow a cure for polio is completely out of reach for the private sector. Do you really believes this?
You do know that people were literate before government schools? And before government schools, those who could read were actually able to read at a very high level. Here is an interesting piece that demonstrates how significantly reading levels have declined in the US.
Were Colonial Americans More Literate than Americans Today?
And regarding child labor, it occurs mostly due to necessity. No parent would put their child in labor unless it was needed for the family’s survival.
India’s child labour is a deplorable necessity
What eliminated child labor in the US wasn’t the FedGov. It was workers improved wages, which was driven by improvements in productivity. And productivity gains were accomplished by capital investments, not government.
It’s more accurate to say that libertarians distrust government. There is no other institution in society that has a legal monopoly on the use of force. That’s why vigilance is required to ensure government doesn’t impose arbitrary laws on the people.
I have a better question for you. Should the US government have paid hunters to kill bison in order to conquer the Plains Indians?
Was the Buffalo Hunted to Near Extinction?
Genocide by Other Means: U.S. Army Slaughtered Buffalo in Plains Indian Wars
From a libertarian perspective, part of the problem with the American bison is what we call the tragedy of the commons. The bison and the land they roamed on were not privately owned. Today, most American bison reside on private lands where they are raised for meat. Since they are private property they are far better protected. This same approach is working throughout the world.
http://www.creators.com/opinion/john-stossel/eat-the-tigers.html
The libertarian private property ethic saves the day…..again.
Here is another question. Since you approve of the FedGov protecting various endangered species, how do you feel about regulations that infringe on private property rights?
http://www.propertyrightsalliance.org/use-abuse-endangered-species-act-a2995
This is the ugly side of “good” government.
You have defended government at every turn and yet you don’t see government being intrinsically good or bad. That’s hard to believe. I don’t have a problem at all with a “statist” border. The government has a valid role preserving order. Diversity + proximity = war. There are no policies that with truly favor all native born citizens over foreigners. That’s because these policies invariably hurt consumers, which include all native born citizens. Of note, your state of Alabama has greatly benefited from foreign investment. Alabama is the Detroit of the South. Mercedes Benz, Hyundai, Honda, Toyota all have plants there. South Carolina has BMW and Volvo. Tennessee has Nissan and VW. Mississippi has Toyota. How would enacting protectionist trade policies affect the foreign investment that has greatly benefited these states? And how would the people of the South had benefited if they were forced to by poorly made vehicles from Detroit instead of purchasing high quality and reliable vehicles from Europe and Asia?
He didn’t have to confiscate their property and ship them to concentration camps.
What you do is to cite a few government successes and use it as a basis to argue that we would all be living hand to mouth without government.
By African standards, Somalia is doing quite well. It’s unrealistic to expect for them to thrive based on European standards because they are not Europeans. Libertarian economic policies cannot overcome genetics.
There is a connection. Typically liberal cat ladies don’t have a marketable skill set. They really can’t cut it in the private sector. Therefore they rent seek from the government. That’s why they are naturally drawn to government institutions. If there were a private primary and secondary education market, they won’t find many buyers for their product (multiculturalism).
Were the elderly uncomfortable prior to SS and Medicare? Libertarians see the tragedy in that providing for the elderly was outsourced from the family to the government. Instead of children directly taking care of their parents they now leave it to the government. How comfortable are the elderly not living in multi-generational with their children but instead have been put in old folks homes? Another tragedy is that these programs don’t encourage childbearing among the young. A lot of this can be seen in the low birth rates among Whites.
Of note, the Amish don’t receive Social Security or Medicare. Are their elderly living in squalor and eating grass roots and dog food? Are the Amish elderly dying in the streets? Of course not. The Amish construct multi-generational housing for their elderly and get this, they take care of their parents without government help. If the Amish can do it, why can’t everyone else? Also note that the Amish have very healthy birthrates. We wouldn’t be at danger of being demographically displaced if we had Amish birthrates.
I don’t really see taxes as the issue, so this isn’t that big of a letdown for me. Still I’d have liked to see the leftist corporations get exactly what they want.
As to libertarianism, any system that respects states rights is going to allow for such a system to pop up and for its supporters to have their say.
the wheels are coming off Trump’s ego-driven campaign in a hurry now. When all’s said and done, he won’t be much of a factor; sufficient that he derailed the Bush III coronation. Most likely the Republiscam oligarchs will arrange a double-group entitlement ticket – Carson + Fiorina – calculating that’ll gain them enough Black and Chick votes to offset the loss of another 5 million – 10 million White male votes. Hope this loses big to whatever garbage the Demoncrats vomit up – probably Biden/Warren. That’d be ideal: we on the HardRight – which excludes about 2/3 of the “we can still vote our way out of this” nitwits on this thread – need to get rid of the Republiscam party now and forever. Which will give non-self liquidating Whites no place to go…but the gun store
HW, you are seriously a total wet blanket. We’ve got the entire GOP scurrying like rats, we’ve got a candidate who says things that haven’t been said in over forty years, we have now watched Hitler-y Clinton literally destroy herself in an orgy of ‘I’m above the law’ pride, leaving who? Biden to be the Dem’s first choice, and we are back to WHITE MEN AS POLTICOS for both parties for the first time since what? Geraldine Ferraro?
And you think Trump isn’t a good candidate? I only want to see him start spending his billions on ads, and campaign stuff. I’ve signed up to help Trump, and they’ve taken my info, but I’ve not seen a state organization yet here in my state, nor have I been contacted by anyone. This is my concern. I’m willing to go along with the vision and the rhetoric, as that’s all we have left. Fiorina is an idiot of a woman, and Ben Carson is a lying ‘Magic Negro’. The rest are cucks, and you and I both know it.
Is this tax plan perfect? No, but abolishing the death/inheritance tax is a great first step, and you forget the people’s enthusiasm for Trump, and it’s still more than a year away from the election! You are too young to remember, but this was the same joy and fervor that attended Reagan’s campaign in 1979.
We NEED a man with Trump’s vision, if only to get the American populace that cares (For the Obamaniacs don’t) about this nation- all of its people- once again.
You’re just mad that Trump isn’t implementing all YOUR pet peeves. Which is utterly selfish. Look to the larger picture. The Nativism, the ‘THEY ALL HAVE TO GO’ mentality has broken wide open the entire discourse for the first time since Eisenhower, if not JFK and the Immigration Reform Act of 1965. As another noted, THIS IS THE MAJOR ISSUE. Not your desire to ‘stick it’ to the Oligarchs.
Hunter Wallace // September 29, 2015 at 9:03 pm //
“Trump is going to run a conventional Republican campaign: a bright shiny tax cut for the wealthy at the core and various other proposals as bait to attract a broader swath of voters.
What did Reagan and George W. Bush do? Predictably, the first item on their agenda was the tax cut. They both pushed amnesty for illegal aliens later in their terms.”
Its an often used strategy because it works every time. Run hard right to attract the Republican base, then back away from your comments until election day.
We always knew this was coming.
Disappointing, but hardly surprising.
It really is setting up to be a case of Election 2016: Donald Trump runs for president, Hillary ensues.
“By African standards, Somalia is doing quite well.”
Actually, Somalia is doing extraordinarily poorly, even by African standards.
http://www.dailystormer.com/the-donald-attacks-hedge-fund-boys-read-jews-endorses-putin-and-assad/
Far better news/views than Wet Blanket HW.
We’re back to the same old bait – a wall on the Mexican border the size of the Great Wall of China – and the same old hook – a Herbert Hoover size tax cut for billionaires.
In 2014, the Republicans promised to block Obama’s amnesty if they won control of Congress. Instead, they passed Obamatrade.
Trump really doesn’t attack the hedge fund boys. His tax plan eliminates one loophole – probably to get headlines – while slashing their rates in such a way that they come off better than they were before.
Taxes isn’t anywhere near my number one issue either.
I know from experience though that taxes, trade, spending and other money related issues ARE the most important issues to the Republican establishment. Every single election they make all kinds of promises, but once they get some degree of power, whether at the state or federal level, they use it to further their economic agenda. Immigration is a financial issue for them too. They support mass immigration for the same reason they despise unions. They want to depress wages.
The question for us is whether or not we want to be suckers like the pro-life crowd and vote for more Republicans who will use their power to slash taxes for the wealthy and pass free trade deals.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/30/politics/suffolk-poll-donald-trump-leads-ben-carson-carly-fiorina/
Choo-choo!