Almost daily Corner bashing part 2

Though most liberals and Democrats--myself included--think the idea of raising taxes on people who make $200,000 a year and up is both empirically very sound and also not a very drastic or controversial ideas, there's no harm in theory in having legitimate arguments with doctrinaire opponents of income tax increases. The problem, of course, is that the idea is so empirically sound and so not very drastic that its opponents often just outright lie about it.

Hillary’s been out proclaiming her government redistributionist message of “shared prosperity.” Her growth-paralyzing solution? Increase taxes on Americans making more than $200K a year. This is France before Sarkozy stuff.

Incidentally, Hillary’s tax hike plan would slaughter somewhere around 25 million small, owner-operated businesses. How’s that for sound economic policy?

On the one hand, Chirac's France did tax its people more than we do ours, so there is one extremely tenuous point of contact between Chirac's France and Hillary Clinton's vision for America. No matter that the similarities pretty much end there. When you have positively no idea what you're talking about, the next step is to--regardless of merit--reflexively imply that Democrats are French socialists on the basis of one data point. Likewise, one can imply that CNBC--the cable network that employs Larry Kudlow--is a broadly dishonest propaganda outlet hosted by ghoulish, dishonest white men. But this would actually be a more accurate critique of CNBC than is Kudlow's critique of Hillary Clinton.

On the other hand, pretty much no matter who gets elected president in the United States, Sarkozy France will still tax its wealthy at higher levels than we tax ours. Which means that not only is Kudlow's blather both scurrilous and non-sequitorial, it's also just lazy and stupid. Because inasmuch as a tax increase on the wealthy in America is "France before Sarkozy stuff," it's also "France during Sarkozy stuff" and probably "France after Sarkozy stuff."

On the third hand (hitting back against the ignominious tripe Larry Kudlow writes requires a mutant third hand) there's the matter of lying. Obviously it's harder to reference (or read) a study analyzing the likely  economic impact of such a tax increase than it is to just make stuff up altogether, so we're told that if Hillary is president, 25 million small businesses will basically be destroyed. Twenty-five million isn't a number that emerges from, say, a think-tank paper approaching the problem from a gross-profit standpoint, but neither is it a number pulled out of nowhere. What it is is the total number of small businesses in America. All of which, we are to fear, will be wiped out by the gale-force tax winds of Hurricane Hillary.