"The real reason to oppose increasing tax rates on the wealthy is that it's a good bet they could do more to help the economy if they keep their money rather than have their earnings confiscated by the government and spent on another round of stimulus"
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Savage frames inequality as a kind of economic philanthropy: let the rich keep more, and they will naturally deploy it in ways that lift everyone. The move is less a technical argument than a story about competence and trust. “Good bet” signals a pragmatic, investor’s sensibility rather than ideological certainty, inviting readers to treat tax policy like portfolio management: government is the bad allocator, private wealth the smart capital. It’s persuasion by vibe as much as by evidence.
The subtext hinges on loaded verbs. “Confiscated” doesn’t describe routine taxation; it evokes seizure, punishment, even illegitimacy. That word choice quietly shifts the moral baseline from “taxes fund a shared project” to “the state takes what isn’t theirs.” Then “another round of stimulus” is positioned as a tired, wasteful habit, a bureaucratic relapse. The phrase doesn’t argue about multipliers or employment; it taps stimulus fatigue, implying we’ve already tried this and it didn’t work - or at least didn’t feel like it did.
Contextually, this sits squarely in post-crisis/post-recession politics where “job creators” rhetoric battled with anger over bailouts and rising deficits. Savage’s intent is to make opposition to higher top rates sound like common-sense economic stewardship, not self-interest. The cleverness is in how it reassigns agency: prosperity becomes something the wealthy “do” for the economy when unshackled, while government spending is cast as inert or counterproductive. It’s an argument that asks for faith in private discretion while treating public discretion as suspect by default.
The subtext hinges on loaded verbs. “Confiscated” doesn’t describe routine taxation; it evokes seizure, punishment, even illegitimacy. That word choice quietly shifts the moral baseline from “taxes fund a shared project” to “the state takes what isn’t theirs.” Then “another round of stimulus” is positioned as a tired, wasteful habit, a bureaucratic relapse. The phrase doesn’t argue about multipliers or employment; it taps stimulus fatigue, implying we’ve already tried this and it didn’t work - or at least didn’t feel like it did.
Contextually, this sits squarely in post-crisis/post-recession politics where “job creators” rhetoric battled with anger over bailouts and rising deficits. Savage’s intent is to make opposition to higher top rates sound like common-sense economic stewardship, not self-interest. The cleverness is in how it reassigns agency: prosperity becomes something the wealthy “do” for the economy when unshackled, while government spending is cast as inert or counterproductive. It’s an argument that asks for faith in private discretion while treating public discretion as suspect by default.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wealth |
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