This Stephen Moore piece from the Wall Street Journal is a classic WSJ opinion piece in that it subtly distorts what the GOP leadership in North Carolina has done with its fiscal policy in order to make it appear sound. Specifically, these lines kill me:
To their credit, Mr. Berger and his fellow GOP lawmakers have passed a pro-growth plan that will slash the state personal income tax rate to 5.75% from 7.75% by 2015; cut the corporate tax to 5% from 6.9%; and eliminate the state estate tax.All of this will spur growth and job creation. Yet unions and others on the left pummel the plan as a giveaway to the rich.
Cutting taxes at this time may be the correct thing to do, given that we want to encourage people to spend money, but what Moore will not admit is that the protesters are correct, and that the state government is redistributing money to rich people, largely because GOP legislators believe it’s the correct thing to do — Moore simply won’t own that. Tellingly, he leaves out that the “tax cut” for the state income tax also involves switching to a flat tax, and he makes no mention of the legislature’s moves to broaden sales taxes to include more types of sales. In other words, all of the added revenue is going to come from people lower on the economic ladder, all of the spending cuts will hurt people lower on the economic ladder, and the Republican government believes things will work out in the end.
Furthermore (and it’s way more complicated than can be summarized here) a major element of North Carolina’s economic policy since the 1920s has been to differentiate itself from other Southern states, and they’ve done it with a certain amount of success. Universities! Roads! Tech industry! Banking!
Now that this brand of modern conservative is in charge of the state, it’ll be interesting to see how much like South Carolina the GOP aims to be.
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