TAX THE RICH? IT'S BEEN DONE ALREADY

I originally posted on this subject when my daughter was laid off. Now it’s time for a little bit of the history of taxing the rich. First, the prediction, taken from a letter to the editor of the New York Times published on January 3, 1991:

I have been in the boat business since 1972. The luxury tax that came into effect this year is in general unfair, but as it pertains to boats, grossly so. My industry was singled out and is being crushed by this tax. This will translate into lost jobs for about 600,000 people if something is not done quickly.

JOE MEGLEN
Dana Point, Calif.
Dec. 27, 1990

And the result (taken from the transcript of a PBS News Hour program broadcast on January 1, 1996):

KWAME HOLMAN: According to David MacFarlane, president of Alden Yachts, Dockery's order brought the company back from the brink of collapse. MacFarlane thinks back to November 1990, when President Bush and the Democratic majority in Congress agreed to levy the luxury tax. He says he still can't believe they did it.

DAVE MacFARLANE, Alden Yachts: I don't know anybody in the Marine industry that didn't know that there was a total disaster to start, and it's still amazing to think how somebody could come up with an idea that would shut off a business, and everybody that was in the business knew this would happen, and yet it floated right through.

KWAME HOLMAN: The theory behind the luxury tax sounded simple enough. Congress believed anyone willing to spend $100,000 or more on a new boat surely would be willing to pay an additional 10 percent to the federal government. But that didn't happen. Rather than pay the tax, many people in the market to buy a boat either didn't buy one, or bought one overseas. As a result, the luxury tax didn't bring in much money at all, and the customers' reluctance to buy put the boat-building business, particularly here in Rhode Island, out of business. We first visited Rhode Island in June of 1992. The luxury tax had been in effect for 18 months. Tens of thousands of jobs had been lost across the country, thousands in Rhode Island alone.

And now the Democrats want to do it again? Don’t I remember from somewhere something about those refusing to read history being condemned to repeat it? And something to the effect that history repeats itself, first as a tragedy, then as a farce?

Jeez. This administration makes Robin Hood look like a piker.