Fiscal Cliff Truths

The redoubtable Thomas Sowell has an insightful column today on what's really at stake in the "fiscal cliff" negotiations.  His take on the prospect of "tax cuts for the rich" being our saving grace:

First of all, despite all the melodrama about raising taxes on “the rich,” even if that is done, it will scarcely make a dent in the government’s financial problems. Raising the tax rates on everybody in the top 2 percent will not generate enough additional tax revenue to run the government for ten days. 

And what will the government do to pay for the other 355 days in the year?

The many euphamisms used by President Obama and his administration that go for high political principles:

The very catchwords and phrases used by the Obama administration betray how phony this all is. For example, “We are just asking the rich to pay a little more.” 

This is an insult to our intelligence. The government doesn’t “ask” anybody to pay anything. It orders you to pay the taxes it imposes, and you can go to prison if you don’t. 

Then there are all the fancy substitute words for plain old spending — words like “stimulus” or “investing in the industries of the future.”

[...] 

What about “investing in the industries of the future”? Does the White House come equipped with a crystal ball? Calling government spending “investment” does not make it investment any more than calling spending “stimulus” makes it stimulate anything. 

What in the world would lead anyone to think that politicians have some magic way of knowing what the industries of the future are? Thus far the Obama administration has repeatedly “invested” in the bankruptcies of the present, such as Solyndra.

And what Machiavelli would call the "effectual truth" of Obama's current economic path:

All the pretty talk about how tax rates will be raised only on “the rich” hides the ugly fact that the poorest people in the country will see the value of their money decline, just like everybody else, and at the same rate as everybody else, when the government creates more money and spends it. 

If you have $100 and, after the inflation that follows from “quantitative easing,” that $100 dollars will buy only what $80 bought before, then that is the same economically as if the government had taxed away one-fifth of your money and spent it. 

But it is not the same politically, so long as gullible people don’t look beyond words to the reality that inflation taxes everybody, the poorest as well as the richest.

If we only had one person in Obama's Dept. of Treasury who had half the mind of Dr. Sowell's, we would be much better off.