Wealth & Money Quote by Eric Cantor

Cantor wraps an ideological wish list in the soothing language of pragmatism: “a perfect world” signals both ambition and absolution. It’s a rhetorical escape hatch that lets him pitch a radical rewrite of the tax code while pre-empting objections about deficits, inequality, or political feasibility. The move is classic Washington framing: start with “competitiveness” - an applause line that sounds like national self-defense - then slide to the real destination, a flat tax, sold as elegant inevitability rather than a contested choice.

The intent is twofold. First, to normalize corporate tax cuts by treating them as a global arms race. “Competitive in the world economy” implies the U.S. is losing unless it joins the race to the bottom, shifting the burden from capital to labor or consumption without having to say so. Second, to rebrand distributive politics as technocratic hygiene. A flat tax is marketed as simplification, but its subtext is redistribution upward: it flattens not just rates, but the moral claim that those who gain most from the system should pay more into it.

The context matters. Cantor, a House Republican leader during the post-2008 austerity era, is speaking to a donor-friendly coalition that prizes growth narratives and distrusts progressive taxation as a form of punishment. “Ultimately” is doing quiet work here: it positions the flat tax as the end of history, the logical conclusion of modernization, even though it would remake the social contract.