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This sounds fair to me. Start a war...pay as you go.:rock
June 25, 2019, 5:15 PM CDT
By Noah Berlatsky
<This week, former Texas congressman and Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke proposed a war tax. The proposal represents the most radical antiwar policy of anyone vying for the Democratic nomination in 2020.>
<O'Rourke's proposal is logistically pretty simple. When a new war is authorized, a tax would automatically go into effect to help pay for it. The tax would be levied on all families "without current members of the Armed Forces or veterans of the Armed Forces," and it would be progressive. Households making more than $200,000 would pay $1,000 a year. Those making less than $30,000 would pay $25 a year. The proceeds from the tax would go into a fund to support veteran's health care.>
<There has been plenty of initial skepticism of O'Rourke's plan, especially among young progressives. A common concern is that the tax would become primarily a new funding mechanism for war and war's consequences. Alex Pareene, a staff writer for The New Republic, for example, tweeted that "an actually good war tax would raise the top marginal rate 10 points for each new war." Similarly, Ken Klippenstein, a reporter for The Young Turks, tweeted that we should have a war tax on defense contractors rather than on "working people for wars the vast majority of them never supported.">
<In part, this opposition is O'Rourke's fault. By framing the war tax as part of a veterans health bill, he obscured its radical potential to change the political calculus around foreign intervention. This makes it seem like the war tax is a domestic spending proposal, rather than as a frontal assault on the foreign policy establishment.>
<Nonetheless, it is in fact a potentially transformative foreign policy proposal. Currently, wars are financed through debt and borrowing. Most people therefore don't feel the effects of these conflicts in any direct concrete way. A war tax would change that, as Sarah Kreps, author of "Taxing Wars: The American Way of War Finance and the Decline of Democracy," explained to me. "If people were forced to pay the cost of war, they would make some sort of calculation in their minds about whether the war being fought is worth the fiscal sacrifice they're making," Kreps says. "And as soon as those are no longer in alignment, they would start putting pressure on leaders to find a suitable end to the war.">
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opini...-could-radically-change-political-ncna1021606
June 25, 2019, 5:15 PM CDT
By Noah Berlatsky
<This week, former Texas congressman and Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke proposed a war tax. The proposal represents the most radical antiwar policy of anyone vying for the Democratic nomination in 2020.>
<O'Rourke's proposal is logistically pretty simple. When a new war is authorized, a tax would automatically go into effect to help pay for it. The tax would be levied on all families "without current members of the Armed Forces or veterans of the Armed Forces," and it would be progressive. Households making more than $200,000 would pay $1,000 a year. Those making less than $30,000 would pay $25 a year. The proceeds from the tax would go into a fund to support veteran's health care.>
<There has been plenty of initial skepticism of O'Rourke's plan, especially among young progressives. A common concern is that the tax would become primarily a new funding mechanism for war and war's consequences. Alex Pareene, a staff writer for The New Republic, for example, tweeted that "an actually good war tax would raise the top marginal rate 10 points for each new war." Similarly, Ken Klippenstein, a reporter for The Young Turks, tweeted that we should have a war tax on defense contractors rather than on "working people for wars the vast majority of them never supported.">
<In part, this opposition is O'Rourke's fault. By framing the war tax as part of a veterans health bill, he obscured its radical potential to change the political calculus around foreign intervention. This makes it seem like the war tax is a domestic spending proposal, rather than as a frontal assault on the foreign policy establishment.>
<Nonetheless, it is in fact a potentially transformative foreign policy proposal. Currently, wars are financed through debt and borrowing. Most people therefore don't feel the effects of these conflicts in any direct concrete way. A war tax would change that, as Sarah Kreps, author of "Taxing Wars: The American Way of War Finance and the Decline of Democracy," explained to me. "If people were forced to pay the cost of war, they would make some sort of calculation in their minds about whether the war being fought is worth the fiscal sacrifice they're making," Kreps says. "And as soon as those are no longer in alignment, they would start putting pressure on leaders to find a suitable end to the war.">
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opini...-could-radically-change-political-ncna1021606
