Why does the US Government tax its US industries when it can apparently just “print” a near infinite amount of money with little or no apparent consequences?
Four reasons.
- Even the Fed and its acolytes know that severe consequences are in store due to its endless rounds of “quantitative easing.” Let’s leave aside questions about whether pandemics and insurrections are subterfuge for a malevolent, invisible, coercive hand.
- Industrial taxes do after all raise funds. Let’s leave aside the morality and efficacy of methods and optimal rates (from whose perspective?).
- Industrial taxes are the fine edge of industrial policy whereby the anointed few control (mis-)direct the (lesser) many. Taxes are the stick. Tax abatements, refunds and exceptions are the carrots of coercion.
- And, let’s get right to the heart of it. It’s in these abatements, refunds and exceptions that the lobbyists earn their keep, and keep the legislative, executive and judicial goldbricks in gold and bricks. Witness the wealth that has accrued to Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell, to cite just two egregious examples.