Thomas Sowell on tax rates, tax revenues and infrastructure

Tragic Implications (HT: PowerLine):

Two recent tragedies -- in Minnesota and in Utah -- have held the nation's attention. The implications of these tragedies also deserve attention.

Those politicians who are always itching to raise tax rates have seized upon the neglected infrastructure of the country as another reason to do what they are always trying to do.

Those who live by talking points now have a great one: "How can we fight an expensive war and repair our neglected infrastructure without raising taxes?"

Plausible as this might sound, tax rates are not tax revenues. The two things have moved in opposite directions too many times, over too many years, for us to take these clever talking points at face value...

...Even if we were to assume that higher tax rates will automatically result in significantly higher tax revenues, the case for throwing more money at infrastructure would still be weak.

Some of the money already appropriated for maintaining and repairing infrastructure is being diverted into other pet projects of politicians.

Money supposedly set aside for repairing potholes and maintaining bridges is diverted to the building of bicycle paths or subsidizing ferries or buses. These other things have more of a political pay-off.

Not only are there well-publicized ribbon-cutting ceremonies for building something new, many of these new things can be named for the politicians who had them built. Thus there are all sorts of government structures named for Senator Ted Stevens in Alaska and for Senator Robert Byrd in West Virginia.

But nobody names pothole repairs for anybody or puts any politician's name on the rivets used to repair an existing bridge.

Moreover, nobody blames a politician when a bridge collapses years after he put his name on some government building with money that could have been used to make bridges safer longer...

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