(3089/898) Luce and taxes and Marx (Oh, my!)

2321) At a time when people are being bombarded daily with more and more headlines and more and more information, they are, ironically, becoming less informed.

Henry Luce
prospectus for the creation of Time magazine
quoted by Walter Isaacson,
incoming managing editor of Time
interviewed by Evan I. Schwartz
"Time's Pathfinder" in
Wired (3/1996)

2322) Beyond the sweet sound of the words "abolish the IRS", the Republican case for cutting taxes rests on a theory and a reading of history. The history lesson, summed up nicely by [Republican Senator from Texas Phil] Gramm, is that "since the 1950s, the rapidly rising tax burden, together with new competition in world markets, has stifled growth in the economy and produced this stagnant income problem." The theory is that slashing taxes will reignite vigorous growth, both by leaving consumers with more money to save or spend and, most important, by increasing the supply of capital available for businesses to invest in ways that make the economy more productive.

Saying the Republicans' history is skewed would be like saying Ronald Reagan is getting on in years. America's tax burden - federal, state, and local, as a proportion of GNP - did rise in the 1950s and 1960s, but since 1970 it has stayed roughly the same. "You put the numbers down on paper," [Brookings Institution economist Gary] Burtless says, "and what you have is the most remarkable period of growth, the best productive performance in the history of the US, occurring when the tax burden was going up. The most it's ever gone up in history. Then the tax burden stops going up and [...] well, the last 20 years have been pretty shabby. Now, I would never argue that the rising tax burden caused the growth of the '50s and '60s, or vice versa since then. But, unfortunately for the Republicans, the correlation goes in exactly the reverse direction of their theory."

John Heilemann
"The Netizen: It's The New Economy, Stupid"
Wired (3/1996)

2323) From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

Karl Marx
Critique of the Gotha Program (1875) [B16]

[Note: Marx was possibly quoting or paraphrasing Louis Blanc – "Let each produce according to his aptitudes and his force; let each consume according to his need." Organisation du Travail (1840) – or Morelly – "Nothing in society will belong to anyone, either as personal possiession or as capital goods, except the things for which the person has immediate use, for either his needs, his pleasures, or his daily work. Every citizen will make his particular contribution to the activities of the community according to his capacity, his talent, and his age; it is on this basis that his duties will be determined, in conformity with the distributive laws." Le Code de la Nature (1755)). [B16]]

2324) Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of the heartless world, and the soul of souless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

Karl Marx
A Contribution to the Critique of
Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1844) [CQ]

[Note: Variations cited in [CQ]&[WQ]: "Marxism is the opium of the intellectuals" (Raymond Aron, aphorism from the title of his book The Opium of the Intellectuals, 1955); "In the United States today, opiates are the religion of the people." (Thomas Szasz, The Second Sin, 1973) Also:

Marxism is undoubtedy a religion, in the lowest sense of the word. Like every inferior form of the religious life it has been continually used, to borrow the apt phrase of Marx himself, as an opiate for the people.

Simone Weil, Oppression and Liberty (1955) quoted by Aron.]

2325) The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

Karl Marx and Frederich Engels
The Communist Manifesto (1848) [B16]